Black and grey compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W letters and an arrow with feathers below, on the side of a torso over the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and arrow with feathers on ribs

Geometric · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink compass rose sits within a circle, with an upright arrow above and two feathers hanging below it, and the cardinal letters N, E, S and W placed around the ring. The linework is bold and clean, with grey shading inside the circle and across the feathers. The design is centred on skin along the side of the ribs, with a bra strap and jeans waistband visible at the edges of the frame.

Geometric Ribs Compass Compass rose Arrow Feather Letter Cardinal points

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass compass had been my grandfather's, and it stopped turning the morning my brother Tom went into Harrow Wood after the lost ewe. I sat on the stile with the lid open on my knee, watching the needle wobble and settle, wobble and settle, pointing at nothing but the trees.

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Mrs Abernethy at the post office said the wood shifted its paths whenever someone went missing in it, and the only sure way out was to follow the arrow rather than the letters on the dial. I had never believed her. Grandad always said N, E, S and W never lied, though he tied two grey jay feathers to the chain for luck and called them his compass wings. I took the compass, the feathers and a torch with a dying battery, and went in at dusk.

The needle spun in my palm like a dog chasing its tail. Then the two feathers lifted off the chain, though there was no wind, and drifted south between the birches. I followed them past three stiles I didn't recognise and a well I was certain I'd passed that morning. At last they fell onto a fallen oak, and there was Tom, sitting beside the ewe, dry and cross, insisting he'd only been walking in a circle for an hour.

We came out at the stile as the church clock struck seven. Tom still says the compass was broken all along. I keep it on the windowsill now, needle free to point wherever it likes, and when I go walking I trust the feathers.