Black and grey compass rose tattoo with a long vertical arrow across the thigh, above knitted blue leg warmers and plaid shorts.

Compass rose tattoo on a thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large compass rose sits within a circular frame on the thigh, with a vertical arrow running through its centre from top to bottom. The linework is dark and fine, and the star points and ring are shaded in grey tones, with some faint script curving along the upper edge of the frame. The photograph is taken at a close angle, with knitted blue leg warmers above and plaid shorts below.

Thigh Compass Compass rose Arrow Star Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell Pardoe had counted the lost property twice before the last lorry pulled out of the field at Hollin Green, and still the brass compass sat on the trestle table where nobody had claimed it. Its face was a rose of grey points with a needle drawn fine as a hair, and someone had scratched a line of script along the rim that the damp had nearly eaten.

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Her father had run the Waltzer for thirty years and knew every bolt on every ride. He said the long arrow down the middle of a compass was for finding north when the lights went out on a dark night. Nell thought it was for finding the way back to the fair, which moved every week and never went the same way twice.

The showmen's convoy rolled out at dawn towards Bridgnorth. Nell packed the box, slipped the compass into her coat pocket, and walked the empty field in the grey light. The grass lay flattened in the shapes of rides that had gone, and the bolt-holes in the turf were filled with rainwater that held the sky.

At the lay-by she took it out. The needle swung, hesitated, and pointed back across the field, to the patch where the Waltzer had turned its last circle. She didn't post it to the lost-property office in Worcester. She walked back across the wet grass, following the needle, and set the compass down on the nearest bolt-hole with its arrow pointing at the place she had come from.