Traditional style tattoo of a compass rose, anchor and orange flowers with green leaves and a grey rope border, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass, anchor and flowers in traditional style

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A compass rose with a black eight-point star and red centre sits in front of a brown anchor, framed by three orange flowers with dark centres and dark green leaves. A grey beaded rope border and small red and grey motion lines surround the design. Bold black outlines and flat solid colour fill the tattoo, with a light grey highlight on the compass ring.

Traditional Other Compass Compass rose Anchor Flower Leaf Rope Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The coconut shy was still wet with dew when Nell found the compass lying in the grass behind it, its brass ring scratched but its needle still trembling. Her uncle Frank ran the shy, the Waltzer and most of the fair's bad decisions, and he would have told her to leave it for whoever had lost it. She pocketed it anyway, because the fair moved every Monday and things dropped on the road tended to stay lost.

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It did not point north. It pointed across the field, where the Big Wheel's generator idled under a tarpaulin. Nell tapped the glass and the needle swung round to face her boots, then the caravan of Madame Ostrava, who had not been seen outside since Easter. Nell told herself compasses were only ever broken, and that was all they were.

Frank found her sitting on the shafts of the candyfloss cart at noon. "Give that here," he said, and then he went quiet, looking at the needle. "Your gran had one like that. Brought it over from Hull on a boat when she was a girl. Said it steered by whoever you were missing."

Nell waited for the rest. He only took the compass from her, turned it over and read the inscription on the back, which she had never thought to look at. It said Come back by the Michaelmas moon. Frank laughed, a short rough sound, and handed it back. "Then we'll be in Boston by then," he said. "Pack the tent."