Black fine line compass rose tattoo with N and S letters and an arrow pointer on the inner wrist and forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raised hand shows a black ink compass rose with fine radiating rays and a ring at its centre. The letters N and S mark north and south, and a tapering arrow point extends down the forearm. The shading is light and grey-toned against bare skin, with a plain grey background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Compass Compass rose Arrow North South

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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 compass maker's girl had been told three times not to touch the brass rose on the bench, so on the fourth morning she touched it, and the needle swung round and would not settle. Ansel Pryce looked up from his soldering iron and said nothing for a while. Then he wiped his hands on his apron and told her that the needle in that one was not the same as the others.

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He had made it for the Hollin boat the winter before, when old Tom Hollin went out past the breakwater and did not come back. Tom's wife had paid in coins she had saved in a tea tin, and asked for a compass that would point to where her husband was. Ansel had told her that was not what compasses were for. She had asked again, and he had made it anyway, with an arrow of blackened steel running down the card in place of the south mark. Every harbour child knew the story, though none of them had ever seen the thing.

Bet took it from the bench and walked out along the quay with the card flat in her palm. The needle pulled south past the salt sheds, past the net loft, to the bottom of the slipway where the weed was thick and green. There, half in the tideline, sat a pair of sea boots that nobody had claimed. The needle stopped pointing and simply lay still, as if it had got where it was going.

She carried the boots up to the Hollin cottage that afternoon and left them on the step. When she came back down the hill, she put the compass on its nail in the workshop. The needle swung north, and stayed.