Fine line arrow tattoo on the inner forearm, with a four-pointed diamond head and a feather tail shaded in teal and pink.

Arrow with feather fletching on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A thin black shaft runs down the forearm from a four-pointed diamond arrowhead to a small dot, then ends in a feather shaped from fine black outlines. The feather is filled with bands of teal and magenta, while the arrowhead and shaft are left in black linework. The photo is taken outdoors against a wooden bench, with the arm placed diagonally across the frame.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Feather Diamond

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the fire, and mind the creel, it's still wet. Tormod Beag was the best bowman on Eilean Dubh, and he knew it. Every August he shot one arrow out past the skerries and told anyone who would listen that the sea would carry it back to whoever needed it most. Nobody believed him, least of all his wife Ishbel, who had heard the same boast for thirty summers.

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The year the mist came down thick as wool, the Mairi Rose went out for herring and did not come home by dark. Tormod stood on the shingle with his bow and said nothing. He had cut the head from a sliver of whalebone, and he had dyed the feather that August in the blue of deep water and the pink of the wild thrift on the machair. He nocked it, drew it back until the string sang, and loosed it into the grey.

Nobody heard it land. But at first light the boat came in on the swell, low in the water, with five men alive and one of them tangled in his own line. Caught on the bow was the arrow, its shaft whole and the feather still bright. The diamond point had hooked the mooring ring as neatly as a tailor's needle. Ishbel lifted it free, and the men, half mad with relief, swore it had steered them home like a star.

The feather hangs in the bothy still, above the peat stack. Go on, look at it while the light is low. The blue lies over the pink, and when the sun moves the bands seem to slide against each other, the way the tide slides over the sand. Tormod never told anyone which colour was the true one. I think he was waiting for the sea to say.