Black geometric compass with arrows running up and down the forearm, with solid triangles on the arrowheads.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and arrow on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black compass rose sits at the centre of the forearm, with a long arrow extending upwards and another extending downwards. The linework is bold and even, with solid black triangles filling the arrowheads and a few small tick marks around the compass edge. The design is entirely black ink on pale skin, centred vertically along the forearm.

Geometric Blackwork Forearm Compass Arrow Triangle Compass rose

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass compass in the hall of the Gull's Rest had not pointed true since the winter the chimney came down, but Mrs Penhallow would not let it go to the rag man. Every Monday it fell to you to polish the glass and tap the needle back to life, and every Monday it swung back to the wrong quarter, as if it had its own opinions about Saltcombe.

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On the Thursday the boiler failed and the wind came off the bay like a thrown door, Mr Ashdown did not come down to breakfast. His room was on the top landing, the one with the round window that looked towards the lighthouse. You knocked twice, then a third time with the flat of your hand, and the door gave under your palm because it had never been locked at all.

The bed was made. His shaving kit sat squared on the washstand. Pinned to the sloping ceiling was a sheet of cartridge paper, and on it someone had drawn a compass rose in careful black ink, the eight points shooting out like spokes, a fine arrow running up one side and another falling away down the other. The arrowheads were filled solid, triangle upon triangle, as if whoever drew them had been certain of each one. Beneath it, in soft pencil, a single line: Tell her the south one was mine.

You took the paper down and carried it to the hall. When you held it beside the brass compass, the needle shivered, slowed, and settled on the arrow's line as though it had been waiting for permission. Through the open kitchen door you could hear Mrs Penhallow humming and the slap of bread on the griddle. She had never once asked you to wind the thing. She had only ever wanted it to point somewhere.