Compass rose and quote on a calf
Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo
A compass rose with a rope-edged border and a small triangle at its centre sits in the middle of the design, with the script words Not All Who Wander Are Lost curved above and below it. The compass points and rope edge are outlined in solid black, while the inner disc uses fine stippled dotwork shading in grey. The design is black and grey only and is framed against bare skin and a plain background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Teles unrolled the sea-chart on the quay and the wind immediately tried to take it. The old men of Myrrhos held the corners down with their sandals while he studied the ink. Every coast was there, every island and reef, but the middle of the sheet was bare except for a ring of rope drawn by his grandmother's hand, and inside it a star with eight long points.
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"Where is the harbour of Kasos?" asked the captain. Teles could not say. He had sailed by the stars for thirty years and had never once needed the paper.
His grandmother had been a mapmaker who refused to finish her charts. She said a man who knew where every rock lay would stop looking up. So she left the centre open, drew only the winds, and set a small triangle at the heart of the rose, which she called the hearth where a sailor sits when he is home.
Teles carried the chart up to the high place above the town, where the air was clean, and turned it until the eight points lined up with the sky. Then he laid one finger on the triangle and named the winds aloud, one after another, until the captain laughed and the boys on the wall began to repeat them. Not all who wander, the old men muttered, are lost. Teles rolled the chart tight and went down to the boats.
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