Fine black line tattoo of a bow and arrow on the forearm of a person in a striped top and denim shorts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bow and arrow on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small outline tattoo of a bow with a drawn arrow shooting diagonally across it sits on the outer forearm, just below the elbow. The thin black linework is simple with no shading, and the ink is dark grey-black against the skin. The photo is a close, casual shot cropped at the midriff, with a beaded bracelet on the wrist and a denim-clad waist in the background.

Fine line Forearm Bow Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The frost had kept the orchard gate shut since Boxing Day, so Dad's old longbow came down from the rafters of the cart shed with a skin of dust on its belly. My uncle Tobias strung it for me in the yard, his breath hanging between us like washing, and showed me how to sight past the ridge of the barn roof to the lone ash tree standing in the top field.

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Every morning that January I walked the frozen furrows with the bow across my shoulder and a quiver of blunt field arrows knocking against my hip. The hares had gone to ground and the rooks sat hunched along the hedge like undertakers waiting for a funeral. I missed the first twenty shots, then the next ten dropped short in the mud, and I began to suspect the bow was simply too heavy for a girl who spent her afternoons hauling apple crates to the cider house.

On the last Saturday before the thaw, a fox slipped out of the bramble and sat at the edge of the ash's shadow, watching me with an expression of mild embarrassment. I did not draw. I let the string settle against my cheek and waited until my fingers stopped trembling, and when I finally loosed, the arrow passed over the fox's back and stuck quivering in the trunk, a clean line of light through the bare branches.

Uncle Tobias said nothing when he came up the field. He pulled the arrow free, turned it over in his gloved hand, and gave it back to me. The fox had gone, the rooks had started up again, and for the first time since Christmas the wind smelled of something other than coal smoke.