Realism style compass with feather leaves in grey shading and teal accents, tattooed on the inner forearm of an arm held up towards the camera.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass and feathers on an inner forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded compass with a beaded outer ring, a compass rose at its centre and a looped cord at the top, with feather-like leaves rising from the upper edge. Fine linework and soft grey shading give the compass depth, and small teal strokes trail from its lower right edge. A paper stencil or drawing of the same design is held in the foreground for comparison.

Realism Forearm Compass Compass rose Feather Leaf Cord Stencil

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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

The lodger in number six left on a Tuesday, before the gulls were up, and she left the compass on the washstand with a sheet of brown paper folded beneath it. You find it when you strip the bed. The brass is heavier than it looks, its rim strung with tiny beads like a necklace meant for church, and the needle has stopped dead against the glass. When you tap it, it will not swing. You note this in the ledger first, because Mrs Pargeter likes the ledger kept honest.

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The paper is pencilled with feathers and a cord looped at the top, and beneath them, in a hand that leans hard to the right, are the words Wait for the north wind. There is no name. You pin the sheet to the kitchen board beside the bread list. Mrs Pargeter reads it over her spectacles, sniffs, and says the girl was always one for riddles, and that the room is paid through Saturday regardless.

So at low water you take the compass down to the harbour wall and sit among the men mending nets. A boy flies a kite made from a carrier bag. The wind goes round to the north at four o'clock, the needle shivers, and then it swings with a small decided click and points past the breakwater to the grey stub of the old lighthouse, which you have walked beneath a hundred times without once thinking to look up at it.

At the foot of the wall, someone has scratched a feather into the wet sand. The tide is already coming in to take it. You close the lid over the needle, put the compass in your apron pocket, where it keeps pulling at you like a dog on a lead, and go to find out who she was following.