Black and grey tattoo flash of a compass rose with a sun and moon face at its centre, drawn in bold linework.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose with sun and moon

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W at the cardinal points. At the centre sits a circle containing a stylised sun and moon, each with a face, rendered in solid black shapes and fine lines. The design is drawn in black ink on a plain light grey background.

Traditional Compass Compass rose Sun Moon Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother Hesketh had ruled the walled garden at Thornmere for forty summers, and for every one of them the sun and the moon had argued over the bean rows. The sun wanted the warm south side for his tomatoes, the moon the cool north for her cabbages. So the old woman had a mason cut a compass rose into the flagstones at the middle of the path, its points lettered N, E, S and W, and set in its centre a brass disc with two faces, one gold and one silver, looking out at opposite corners.

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The rule was simple. The sun kept the east and the south, the moon the west and the north, and no one was to cross the points. Each morning the sun scorched the lettuces on his side, and each night the moon blanched the leeks on hers.

Then a boy called Wim came up from the coast to hoe the paths for a shilling a day. In his first week he crouched by the compass and studied the faces, both worn thin from squinting across the garden. On the seventh evening he put his thumb to the rim and turned the disc half a circle, so the two faces looked straight at each other.

Morning came up slowly, and for once the sun found nothing to scorch, because the moon's cabbages had crept south in the night and the sun's tomatoes had crept north to meet them. When Mother Hesketh walked the paths at noon she found the beds mixed and thriving, and Wim asleep against the wall, his hoe across his knees.