Black ink drawing of a compass rose with an arrowed star and a clockwork mechanism of gears at its centre, drawn on aged parchment.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose with clockwork gears

Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows an eight-point compass rose with arrow tips around a circular dial marked with fine tick lines. At the centre sits a mechanism of interlocking cogs and a central pointer, shaded with dense cross-hatching and stippling. The design is rendered in black ink on a warm, sepia-toned paper background with no colour.

Compass Compass rose Gear Cog Clockwork Arrow Dial

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mattie, the brass is finally cut and the escapement sings when you breathe on it, so don't you dare tell Father I said so. I've set the great wheel where the old pointer used to sit, and I've scratched the eight winds round the dial the way Grandfather liked them, north with its little spear, south, east, west, and the diagonals fletched like arrows loosed at the rim. He always said a compass that tells the hour is no compass at all, but I think he was wrong, because I've been watching the thing for three nights now and it points true to the minute.

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The trouble is the inner train. Every cog I fit turns against the one before it, and the pointer swings a hair west each time the church clock strikes, as though the whole harbour had leaned over to listen. I took the mechanism apart again on Tuesday and found a tooth missing from the third wheel, sheared clean, and nobody in this town will admit to having been in the workshop. Mrs Halloran swears it was the gull that got in through the skylight, and I am half inclined to believe her.

So I've decided to stop fighting it. I've left the pointer loose on its arbor and I'll let the ship's chandler take the dial to the quay tomorrow, where the tide can set it. If it finds north I'll owe Father a shilling. If it finds us, I'll be home by Michaelmas and you can tell him yourself. Burn this letter after you've read it, mind, the gull is a terrible gossip.