Colour tattoo of a gold compass with a red and blue compass rose and orange autumn leaves scattering across the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and autumn leaves on the back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

A gold-rimmed compass sits at the centre of the design, with a red and blue compass rose and a dark needle. Orange, red and yellow autumn leaves drift away from the compass towards the lower left, drawn with dark outlines. Bold, saturated colour and soft shading give the piece a traditional feel against the pale skin.

Traditional Back Compass Compass rose Autumn leaves Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody on the night shift at St Ebba's believed the old porter when he said the compass belonged to the autumn. He kept it in the pocket of his brown coat, a brass ring with a red and blue rose painted under the glass, the points gone soft with handling. Every October, he said, the leaves came down off the hill behind the hospital and went looking for the sea, and whoever held the needle steady would be walked home.

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Mona, who had the children's ward from ten until six, laughed at him until the night the lift failed between the third and fourth floors. She had a stretcher to get down to theatre and no porter, and the stairs were dark. Her torch flickered. Outside the window, leaves were skittering across the car park, orange and red, all heading the same way, lower left, the way the old man always said.

She went after them. The stairwell smelled of bleach and wet coats. On each landing a single leaf lay on the step, pointing down. At the basement door she found the porter sitting on a plastic chair, the compass open on his knee, its needle trembling towards the wall.

"You followed the wind," he said, not looking up. "Took you long enough."

She delivered the stretcher. Morning came grey over the car park, and the compass was on the windowsill when she left, pointing at the hill where the leaves had come from. She never saw the porter again, only the leaves, caught against the bins each October, all turning the same direction.