Black ink drawing of a tattoo design showing an upright arrow, leafy scrolls and a dotted beaded chain with a drop pendant, in a dotwork and botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Arrow with leafy scrolls and beaded chain

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black linework drawing of an arrow standing upright at the centre, with its shaft and fletching drawn in clean lines. Curling leaf and scroll forms sit across the top, and a chain of dots, circles, diamonds and a teardrop hangs in a curve beneath the arrow. The image is in black ink on a pale background, with the dotted chain and the fine scrolls giving the composition its balance.

Dotwork Botanical Geometric Arrow Leaves Scroll Dot Bead Chain Diamond Circle Teardrop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The rain has been at the market since seven and I've given up pretending the awning keeps anything dry. Mr Pell from the fish stall says it will blow over by noon, which is what he said last Saturday, so I've stopped listening. My trestle is covered in what Mrs Aske left me when she moved to her daughter's in Scarborough: two tins of glass beads, a reel of waxed thread, and a bundle of feathers gone the colour of weak tea. She was a fletcher's widow, and the only person I ever knew who could make a bead string look like it meant something.

Yesterday I found a single arrow wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of the second tin. The shaft is ash, straight as a ruler, with a fine black line drawn down it, the same line you see on the old bow shop sign at the top of Mill Lane. This morning I threaded a chain for it: small dots, a diamond, a black bead the size of a pea, and a teardrop at the end so it would swing when the wind caught it. It looks absurd in this weather. It also looks like it was waiting.

A man in a green coat stopped at the stall an hour ago and asked if I was the one with the arrow. I said I didn't know what he meant. He touched the chain, didn't buy it, and said his grandmother used to hang beads like that from the eaves to keep the pigeons off the washing. Then he walked off towards the car park without his change.

I've hung the arrow on the stall pole now, point up, the beads sagging under the rain. Come home on Sunday if the trains are running. I'm keeping the best bead for you.

Love, Nell