Black and white photo of a small fine line tattoo of a bow and arrow over a triangle on the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bow and arrow outline on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo shows a bow with a drawn string and an arrow pointing down, with the bow's outline forming a triangle. The lines are thin and simple, with some slight variation in weight and a few dotted shading marks along the bow. The photograph is black and white, with the tattoo centred on smooth skin and hair and a blurred background at the top and edges.

Fine line Back Bow Arrow Triangle Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog had sat on Scallow Quay for three days when Dad finally let me take the yew bow down to the breakwater, the one he had steamed and backed with sinew the winter before my mother went to sea. He did not come. He stood at the bottom of the steps with his hands in his oilskin, listening to the bell buoy we could hear but not see.

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The line was the old trick. Before the rockets, every harbour in the county kept a bowman who could send a light arrow over a wreck with a hemp line tied to its shaft, so the crew could haul across a hawser. Dad had taught me the figure his grandfather chalked on the workshop wall: the bow's two limbs, the string drawn back to the chin, the arrow pointing at the water like a plumb line. Three true angles and nothing wasted.

The boat came in on the ebb, a dark shape with its lamp swinging, and I heard the shout from the mole. I drew to the corner of my jaw, held my breath the way he had shown me, and let the arrow go where the bell was. It struck the rigging with a sound like a knuckle on a door. Somebody hauled the line in hand over hand, and the fog thinned in one long grey breath.

Dad took the bow from me at the top of the steps and ran his thumb along the string, checking for fray. 'Clean,' he said, which from him was a medal. Then he turned it over and found the pale patch where the grip had worn through, the place his own hand had been for forty years, and he said nothing at all.