Black ink compass rose with an arrow, eye-like motif and hanging feather tattooed on the inner upper arm of a woman with her arm raised.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and arrow on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose with an eight-point star at its centre sits within thin concentric rings and small radiating dashes. An arrow runs vertically through the design, with a small eye-like motif at its tip and a feather hanging from its base. The design is in solid black ink on pale skin, photographed against a dark grey background with the arm raised.

Upper arm Compass Arrow Eye Feather Star

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

In the winter the Sablemont Chancery ran short of ink, and the Royal Surveyor, old Ansel Orrin, sent me up the tower stairs with a brass compass rose the size of a dinner plate. 'It points true,' he said, 'but only to what is wanted, not what is wished.' I had been apprenticed three years and believed none of it.

Keep reading

The needle swung wide over the map of Hallowmere, the eight points of its star turning like a weathervane in a gale, and stopped on the eastern marshes where no road ran. Beneath the glass a fletched arrow ran through the centre, its head marked with an open eye, and a grey feather hung from its tail to show which way the wind had come. Orrin said the instrument had belonged to the messengers' guild, and that every guild rider carried one until the drought.

I rode out with a satchel of letters and the needle leading me through reeds and fog to a hut where a girl sat beside a dead fire, a bird's feather tucked behind one ear. Her brother had gone to the salt pans and not come back. I did not tell her the compass knew where he was. I only told her it had led me to her, which was the truer thing.

When I returned, Orrin asked where the arrow had pointed. I said home. He laughed and said that was the trick of every good instrument, that it always shows the way back to whoever is holding it. I have kept the compass on my desk since, and I have never once asked it for anything.