Black and grey compass rose tattoo with the words Not all those who wander are lost curved around it on bare skin.

Compass rose with a curved quote

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose sits inside a thin circle, with its eight points shaded in solid black and grey against lighter sections. The handwritten script phrase Not all those who wander are lost follows the curve of the circle above and to the left. The photo is black and white, with the tattoo centred on skin and fabric visible at the top left.

Traditional Lettering Other Compass Compass rose Star Circle Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't look at me like that, Tom Ashby. The kettle's not boiled and the lamb can wait another quarter hour, so pass me the poker and listen. My grandfather told this one with his boots steaming on the fender, and he swore on his mother's grave that every word was true.

Keep reading

It was the January of the big freeze, and Mabel Crane had buried her husband Walter the autumn before, drowned in the Wenning when the ice gave way under him. Among his things she found a brass compass with a rose worked into the lid, and inside the lid, in his cramped hand, the words Not all those who wander are lost. He'd always been off to the market towns, coming home with odd bits of string and a grin, so she took it for a joke at her expense. Then one morning a ewe went missing up on the scar, and there was nobody else to go.

The snow had buried the walls. Every stone looked like every other stone, and the path was gone by the first gatepost. Mabel opened the lid and watched the needle tremble, then settle, and she walked the way it pointed, counting her steps aloud so the wind would not take her thoughts. Near noon she came on the old lime kiln, and under its curved roof the ewe stood with a new lamb pressed against her flank, both of them steaming like kettles.

Mabel wrapped the lamb inside her coat and went down by the same compass, though she could have sworn the needle had drifted on the way back. It was only at the gate that she saw the small scratch Walter had made on the rose's northern point, a mark that had always been there, and understood the words had never been a joke about himself. He had meant them for her, to tell her she could wander the scar and still find her way home. The dog was waiting, tail going, and the lid of the compass was still open in her hand.

That's the tale. Now, the lamb's probably cold, and so am I.