Black compass rose tattoo with dotwork ring and N, E, S, W letters on the outer forearm of a person wearing a dark top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black compass rose sits on the forearm, with a central eight-point star, a ring of fine dots and a shaded inner circle. The letters N, E, S and W mark the cardinal points. The ink is solid black and grey against light skin, and the tattoo is centred on the arm with a white brick wall and wooden steps behind.

Dotwork Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose Cardinal points Dot Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollis had kept the compass in the drawer of the hall table for eleven years, and Tom had never once seen her take it out. When the telegram came from Lerwick he was the one who found it, under a tangle of string and a dead torch, its brass face gone green at the rim. He carried it into the kitchen as if it might spill.

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"Your father bought that in Hull," she said, not turning from the sink. "He said a man who knows where north is can't get very lost."

Tom turned the case over. The rose inside had eight points, the four long ones sharp as pencil tips, and a ring of dots that his father had once told him were the stars the old charts used to count by. Someone had scratched NE into the lid with a nail. He thought of the boat, the Margaret Ann, and the men on it who had not come back, and felt foolish for thinking about the dots at all.

"It's stuck," he said.

"Then unstick it." She dried her hands and came to look. Her thumb pressed the catch, and the needle swung, shivered, and settled against the window behind them, where the yard wall and the coal shed sat in plain daylight. South, he thought. Or north. The needle did not care which way they were facing.

She took the compass from him and set it on the sill with the N turned towards the front door. "Let him find his own way," she said, and went back to the sink.