Black and grey drawing of a compass set in a pocket watch case, with leaves and a dotted pendant, shown as a tattoo design on paper with no body placement.

Compass pocket watch with leaves

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A drawn tattoo design of a compass inside an ornate pocket watch case, with a loop at the top and a pointed pendant below. Three large leaves with fine vein lines and several smaller leaves frame the watch on the sides and behind it. The shading is black and grey, with fine linework, stippled dots on the lower pendant, and a compass rose with numerals and roman-style letters on the dial.

Botanical Dotwork Compass Pocket watch Leaves Compass rose Numeral Pendant Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had found the gap in the awning again, so the water came down in a thin rope at the corner of my stall and I kept moving the velvet tray out of its way. Across the aisle Mrs Okonedo was packing up her chrysanthemums and calling that I looked like a drowned pigeon. I told her I would be a drowned pigeon with a better bank balance if she bought something.

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The man who came at four had a pocket watch cupped in his palm like a bird's nest. The case was dented on one side, and the bow was worn bright where a thumb had rubbed it for years. Brass leaves, or the dim ghosts of them, curled round the back. He said it had run slow since his father died and could I make it honest. I opened the lid. A compass rose sat at the heart of the dial, with a sixteen on the left, a fifty-nine on the right and a seven at the bottom, as if someone had numbered the hours to suit their own sense of direction.

I set it by the church clock across the square, which was dripping like everything else. When I turned the crown, the hand jumped and the needle of the rose swung, shivered and settled on north. The man went quiet. He said his father had always set it by that same clock, and that it would stop at the same minute each time, however many times he wound it. I found a line pencilled inside the case lid, faint as a fingerprint: back by seven, keep the leaves dry.

He laughed until he coughed, paid me in damp coins and walked out into the wet with the watch held flat in both hands. By the time I had folded the awning, the rain had stopped, and the gutters were running full of leaves.