Flash design of a compass rose wrapped in vines and flowers, with a hanging anchor, rope, a bird and a fish, in teal and peach tones.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose with vines, anchor and bird

Botanical · Colour · Flash

A compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W sits at the centre of a circular wreath of twisting vines, leaves and peach-coloured flowers. A rope loops down to an anchor at the lower left, while a bird and a fish sit at the upper right and right edges. The linework is fine and hatched, with soft teal map shading behind the compass and watercolour-style washes on the flowers and bird against a cream background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Tobin,

Keep reading

The chart room smells of linseed and wet rope this morning, and I have finally finished the rose you asked me to keep for you. Father said the compass had no business being drawn in teal when the sea is grey, but I gave the map the colour of the shallows off Ammerlay, the way you described them the night before you left. The needle points north as it always does, though the N has come out a little crooked, as if it were leaning into a wind.

The fishermen's wives have been bringing their children to see it. Old Mrs Quarry says the vines around the rim are wrong, that roses do not grow out of rope, but I told her that everything in Veyl grows out of something it was tied to. She laughed and gave me a pear for the bird.

Which brings me to the bird. Yesterday a gull with a torn wing landed on the sill and would not leave until I had tied a scrap of your last letter to its leg, and then it flew straight up over the harbour wall as though it had been waiting all winter for the job. Father says gulls do not carry post. I say this one did, and I have the proof, because the fish scale you sent from Hallow Reach is pinned beside the anchor now, catching the lamplight.

Come home when the tide turns in your favour. The anchor is drawn in the corner of the page, where you always said a ship should be held, and I have left room at the bottom for your name.

Mira

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