Black ink compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W letters on the upper back near the shoulder, seen from behind a person with loose hair tied up.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person seen from behind, with loose auburn hair tied up in a messy bun and a white top off the shoulder. A black compass rose sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with bold point rays, finer inner lines and the letters N, E, S and W marked on the arms. The warm, sunlit photo is slightly soft, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Back Compass Compass rose Star Hair

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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

Mind the fire, the little ones, and do not touch the brass. Gran's gran kept the lodestone in a tin, and the tin is still in the wall of the Haverlow hall if you know where to knock. Now. Where was I? Ah, the year the north wandered off.

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Every ship on the grey water those days had a rose painted on its chart, eight points, the letters worn to ghosts. Nobody trusted the needle any more. It swung like a drunk man at a christening. So the mapwoman Idris Vane, who could not read a tide table to save her life but could draw a bearing with her eyes shut, sat down with a pot of ink and drew the rose on her own shoulder instead, so she would never be without one.

Her crew laughed. Then the fog came down over the Sound for nine days, and the laughing stopped. On the ninth morning she stood at the rail, pulled her collar aside to show them the points, and walked them west by the shadow of the sun through the ink, reading the N against the light the way her mother had taught her.

They made the harbour with two barrels of water to spare. Ask anyone in Haverlow and they will tell you the rose on Idris's shoulder was what saved them, though the rest of the crew swore it was the stubbornness. The one thing she never told anyone was that the ink was not hers. It was her sister's map, the one who went out past the last buoy and did not come back. Idris drew the rose to keep the way home open for her. Mind you remember that when you're grown and lost.