Two forearms side by side: the left has a fine line arrow with feathered fletching, the right has a bold blackwork arrow and chevron design, both on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow tattoos on two forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown next to each other, each with an arrow tattoo. The left arm has a delicate fine line arrow with feathered fletching running down towards the wrist, drawn in thin, even black lines with light shading. The right arm carries a solid blackwork arrow built from stacked chevrons and geometric blocks, and the image is in black ink with no colour.

Fine line Blackwork Forearm Arrow Feather Chevron Tribal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Past the last sheepfold, where the track narrows to the width of a goat, the old woman Gwen kept two bows hung above her door. Her daughters had long since gone down into the valley, one to the mills and one to the salt boats, and each had taken an arrow from the rack as she left, as the custom was.

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The elder, Ffion, took the fine one, its shaft bound with grey goose feathers she had plucked herself and trimmed with a blade no thicker than a reed. She said a true arrow should fly quiet. The younger, Mair, took the heavy one, cut from ash and marked with stacked chevrons, blocks of black pitch laid down the shaft like steps up a cliff. She said an arrow should know the way back.

In the third winter the snow closed the pass for forty days. Ffion came up from the mills with her feathers gone to rag, and found Mair already at the door, her own arrow broken across her knee. Neither spoke about the years between. They sat by Gwen's fire and fletched a new pair together, one feather at a time, until the light came back over the ridge.

When the thaw opened the pass, they walked it side by side, and at the top Ffion loosed her arrow into the far valley and Mair loosed hers after it, so that the two shafts flew in one line and came down in the same green field. The old woman said it was the only sensible thing either of them had ever done.