Black line drawing of a compass rose with an eight-point star inside a ring, with the letters N, E, S and W at the cardinal points, shown on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose design with N, E, S and W

Black and grey · Flash

A black and white drawing of a compass rose, with a ring around a sixteen-point star and a small central circle. The letters N, E, S and W sit at the cardinal points in a bold, flowing script, and the points have solid black fills with fine hatched detail. The design is shown flat on a plain pale background with no skin or body visible.

Compass Compass rose Star Letter 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 chart has been wet twice this month, and the ink for the north has bled into the sea where the harbour wall used to be. You sit at the kitchen table with a steel nib and a ruler, tracing the rose from the old copy while the kettle ticks on the range. Outside, the wind is doing what it always does in March, pushing the gulls sideways over the slipway as if they had been told off.

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Your grandfather drew the first rose on this island, back when the boats still came in on Tuesdays. He lettered each point by hand, and the W always leaned into the wind like a man walking uphill. You learned the slope of his strokes before you learned to read properly. When the nib snags on the S, you hear his voice: the south is the easy one, love, everyone comes home from there.

On Thursday the sixteen points will be framed in the hall, and the children from the school will stand in front of it and point to places they have never been. You fill the solid points with black, then the fine hatching, line by line, until the star seems to turn slowly under the lamp. Somewhere past the rocks a boat is coming in with its light on, and you know its heading without checking, because you drew the rose that tells you.

When the ink dries you wrap the chart in oilcloth and carry it down to the hall yourself. The north sits where it always sat, a little crooked and very certain. You prop the frame against the wall, turn off the lamp, and wait by the door, the way you were taught, for the first engine to find its bearing.