Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose design

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A black compass rose with a star-shaped outline, a ringed centre and tick marks around the rim, labelled N, E, S and W. The design uses solid black lines and fills on a plain off-white background, with a radial, symmetrical composition. It appears to be a stamp or print-style drawing rather than a photograph of skin.

Geometric Compass Compass rose Nautical North East South West

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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 block had been cut in reverse, which Ada only noticed after the third proof came off the press and hung on the drying line like washing. She held one up to the window of the print shop on Silver Street. The compass rose stood white on black, every point where it should be, but the letters had come up backwards, so the E faced the wrong way and the W looked like a stranger's signature.

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Mr Okafor had cut the lino himself every winter since his wife died, and he had been in bed with his chest for a week. The wedding was on Saturday. The bride, Tilly Marsh, had asked for the rose because her father had taught her to read a chart on the back step of a caravan in Cromer, and the groom had said he would rather be lost with her than found anywhere else. Ada had been left to finish the run. She wiped ink from her thumb onto her apron and thought about the word compass, which had once meant to go round.

She could recut the block, which would take the night and most of her patience. Or she could print the rest as they were, two hundred cards with the letters turned about, and let the guests tilt their heads and squint. She set the last sheet under the platen. The ring of tick marks came up grey and even, the outer points sharp as thorns, and somewhere out on the Humber a ferry sounded its horn.

Tilly rang at ten the next morning, laughing, and said her father would have spotted the mistake in a second and called it the only honest thing about the whole affair. Ada packed the cards into a biscuit tin, pressed the lid down, and left the north pointing at the door, where anyone coming in would have to turn around to find it.