Pen and ink drawing of a compass rose with an arrow, trailing ribbons and feathers, labelled N, E, S and W, in black and grey.

Compass rose and arrow design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pen drawing of a compass rose at the centre, with its eight points radiating out and a ringed hub. A long arrow runs horizontally through it, with the north and south ends labelled N and S and feathers on the left, and a fletched shaft with flowing ribbons on the right. The linework is fine and precise, with stippled shading on the hub and ribbons, and the composition is centred and symmetrical.

Geometric Compass Compass rose Arrow Ribbon Feather Cardinal points North East South West

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Varro had been shooting from the seawall since the gulls started complaining, and by the time the bakery shutters rattled up at four she had tied three ribbons to the shaft of her grandfather's arrow. Her brother Jory watched from the flour sacks, arms white to the elbow, saying nothing, which was how he said most things.

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The rule in Dunmere was older than the harbour. When the sea took a boat and no bodies came back, the family shot an arrow north from the wall at first light, fletched with whatever the lost one had worn last. Where it fell, the search went. Nobody had ever found anything but cold seabed and a loose feather, but they kept shooting because stopping felt like giving up on the water.

This year the arrow fell south, into the tide line below the bakery, and the ribbons were the blue of Jory's wedding sash, which he had never worn because the wedding had never happened. He came down the steps with his apron still on. Nell did not ask him to explain. She only handed him the bread knife and said the oven had been going since midnight and someone had to take the loaves out before they burned.

They went to the water together. The south end of the shaft was already wet, the feathers clinging like hair after rain, and beyond the breakwater a small white light was turning slowly, the way a lamp does when someone is trying to find the shore by it. Jory lit the lantern. The bread could wait.