Black and grey compass rose tattoo with red and blue watercolour washes on a person's limb.

Compass rose with watercolour splashes

Other · Mixed · Photo

A compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W sits at the centre of the design, drawn in black linework with an inner ring and grey shaded points. Soft red and blue watercolour-style washes spread out from behind the compass on both sides. The image is a close, cropped photo of the skin with the tattoo filling the frame.

Other Compass Compass rose Cardinal points Watercolour Splash Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The trolley wheel squealed at the junction by the stairwell, the same way it had every night for a month, and Nell leaned on the handle until it straightened itself out. Half past three. The lifts were out of service again and the west corridor ran long and amber under the emergency lights, with nobody in it but her and the hum of the drinks machine.

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Her grandfather had carried a compass on the boats out of Grimsby for thirty years, and he used to say a needle never lied, it only pointed where the sea wanted you to go. She took it from her pocket and flipped the brass lid. The needle shivered, then leaned towards the fire doors, which was wrong, because the fire doors led east and the ward she wanted was up the stairs. She stood still and waited for it to settle. The black points of the rose sat where they always had, the N sharp as a knife and the S pointing down at the lino.

On the wards there was a saying that when the compass wandered, someone upstairs was about to ask for water and not get it in time. Nell had no idea whether that was true. She climbed the stairs anyway, the trolley bumping behind her, and found the call light blinking above bay four. She filled the jug at the sink, set it on the table within reach, and sat with the patient until the breathing evened out.

When she came back down, the window at the end of the corridor had begun to change. The sky over the car park was going pale at its edges, a bruised red first and then a thin wash of blue, as if someone had dipped a brush in the tide and drawn it across the glass. She put the compass away without looking at it again. It had shown her the way up the stairs, which was all she had asked of it, and the rest of the morning was hers to walk.