Fine line black tattoo of a compass with arrow points and the letters N, E, S and W on a lower leg, with sand on the skin.

Compass and arrows on a lower leg

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A small black compass tattoo with thin arrow lines and arrowhead tips points north, south, east and west, with the compass letters placed between the arms. The linework is fine and even, with no shading or fill, and the design sits above an ankle band. The black and white photograph shows sand scattered across the skin and the surrounding ground, with a soft focus background.

Fine line Calf Compass Arrow North South East West

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Stop tapping the glass, Dai says, and you stop, though the needle keeps trembling as if it has heard something further in. Two hundred fathoms under Pentre Ddu the sky is only a rumour that comes down the shaft with the cage. Your job is to call the bearings and keep the survey book dry, which is harder than it sounds when the lamp keeps guttering in the damp.

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Dai marks each turn with a chalked arrow on the timber, arms out to the four quarters, the letters N, E, S and W crowded into the gaps between them like children at a chapel gate. The men who come after will follow those marks home, he says, and nobody sane goes down a drift without knowing which way the light is. Along the east gallery the water lies up to the sleepers, black and still, and the compass swings there as though it wants you to turn back.

On the third morning the lamp dies at the junction and you are alone with the needle. You hold the brass flat and wait, counting the drips, until the north end steadies and points past a broken prop toward the faint draught you felt an hour ago. You follow it, chalking your own arrow every twenty yards, until a grey thread of daylight shows where the roof has cracked open.

Dai is waiting at the top with his cap in his hands. He does not ask where you have been. He takes the book, turns to the last clean page, and draws one more arrow beneath the rest, pointing up, because up is the only direction nobody in Pentre Ddu ever had to chalk.