Black and grey arrow tattoo with feathered fletching, a bound shaft and a geometric arrowhead running down the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow tattoo on the forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical arrow runs the length of the forearm, with shaded feathers at the top, a plain shaft and a binding wrap near the bottom. The feathers use grey shading and solid black linework, while the shaft and arrowhead are drawn with clean outlines and some hatched detail. The skin tone and background are warm, and the arrow is centred in the frame.

Forearm Arrow Feather Arrowhead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog had swallowed the breakwater light by the time Tom Pell pulled the old bow from the locker in Ada Quayle's net loft. Three cobles were still out past the Carr, and the fourth, the Gannet Rose, had gone quiet on the radio an hour since. Her engine was dead and her crew were drifting toward the reef the harbour men called the Teeth, where the swell broke white even on a calm day.

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Ada didn't ask him why he wanted the bow. She just took down the arrow that hung beside it, the one she'd made the winter her husband drowned. Its feathers were three strips of goose grey, stiffened with varnish and shaded with a pencil so the light caught the edges. Below them the ash shaft ran plain and straight, bound near the head with tarred twine wound tight as a fist. The arrowhead was the old barbed kind, hatched in fine lines she'd cut with a bradawl, so it would grip whatever it struck.

Tom lay on the wet stones at the end of the pier and drew the string to his cheek. The wind came off the water in gusts that tugged at his oilskin. He loosed on the third breath, and the arrow went out grey into the grey, trailing a thin line of tarred cord behind it. For a long moment there was nothing but the slap of the sea. Then a shout came back across the water, and the line went taut and began to sing.

They hauled the messenger rope in hand over hand, then the heavier warp, then the hawser, until the Gannet Rose's stern swung clear of the Teeth and her crew came up the harbour wall one by one, soaked and swearing. Ada was waiting at the top with a flask. Afterwards Tom found the arrow snagged on the pier's iron ring, its feathers still beaded with spray and its binding gone slack. He worked the barbed head free, wiped it on his sleeve, and carried it back up the hill to hang beside her husband's oars.