Black ink geometric compass rose and a small trident on the upper back of a woman in a red bikini on a sunny beach, in a geometric style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose and trident on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind on a sandy beach, with her hand raised to her head and her face not visible. Below her neck, a small trident sits above a dark pointed shape, and a larger compass rose with radiating points is centred between the shoulder blades. The tattoo is in black ink with fine lines and shading, and the warm, sunlit setting with rocky cliffs and turquoise water sits behind it.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Jem,

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The chart of the Scilly approaches came back from the printer with the wrong rose in the corner. Mr Haddow wants the sixteen points to run true to the grid, so I have been at the drawing board since Tuesday with a pricker and a bottle of Indian ink, pricking through the paper until my thumb looks like a pincushion. He says the sea doesn't care for ornament. I told him the sea has never once been lost because a compass rose was too plain, but he was not amused.

Mother asked me to tell you the lamp at the Gwennap post has been relit, so the boats coming round the Lizard have something to steer for. I walked up there on Sunday with the good lens box under my arm. The keeper's boy showed me an old trident hook they used to hang the sounding weights from, rusted to lace, and I thought of you laughing at me for copying it into the margin of every chart I've made this year. Haddow calls it a fancy. I call it the sea's own signature.

Here is the thing I wanted to tell you. Yesterday the rose came out right on the first try. Sixteen points, every one of them true, and I sat back and felt the same jolt I used to feel when you came up the lane from the quay with your boots full of brine. I've pinned it above the drawer where I keep your postcards, so it's the first thing I see each morning.

Send word when you reach Valparaíso. Mind the cold off the Horn, and keep the chart I gave you folded so the north edge faces up. You always forget which way that is.

Your sister, Ada

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