Black and grey geometric mandala flash design with a central cross, star points and teardrop shapes inside a ringed border, with a script heading and paragraphs of text on the right.

Circular mandala with cross and star points

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a circular mandala design with a central cross, a diamond at its centre and four teardrop shapes between the arms. A ring of small four-pointed stars sits between two concentric borders, and a faint geometric outline of a triangle and circle sits behind the design. To the right, a script heading reading Strength sits above three paragraphs of printed text.

Geometric Mandala Cross Star Circle Teardrop Diamond Triangle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now and let the shutters rest, because the snow has shut the pass and nobody walks out of Scarth before the thaw. I'll tell you about a compass-maker called Ansel Crowe, who lived in the valley below the old chapel and made instruments for drovers who never paid him on time.

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One November his daughter Wren went up onto the high moor after a strayed ewe, and the white came down behind her like a dropped sheet. Ansel sat at his bench for three nights cutting a disc of brass. He pierced a ring of small stars around its rim, and inside them he filed a cross of crossed blades, so that any light passing through would throw a shadow like a guard raised. At the centre he set a black diamond of pitch, so a man could find the middle with his eyes shut.

On the fourth morning a golden eagle came down out of the cloud and circled the chapel three times. Ansel, who had never trusted birds, took it as a sign and walked up after it with the disc held to the sky. Where the light fell through the four points, it made four bright drops on the snow, and he followed them. He found Wren under an overhang, her hands wrapped around the ewe's neck, the stars still turning in the brass.

Ansel never sold that compass. He hung it above the inn door, and whenever a traveller asked what it was for, he said only that it was for finding the way back, and then he stopped talking, because that was all the truth he had. Now the fire is low, so go up to bed.