Black and white line drawing of a compass star inside a circle, with roses and thorny vines, shown as a tattoo design without a body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass star with roses and thorny vines

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A compass star with eight points, some filled solid black and others outlined, sits inside a thin circle. Fine-line roses and thorned vines wrap around the central star and extend outwards between the points. The design is rendered in black ink on white with no shading or colour.

Blackwork Botanical Compass Star Rose Vine Thorn Circle

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Wren, the compass came back from the Veyne Marches this morning, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with a hair ribbon nobody claimed, and the needle still swings true. Master Orrin says the brass is older than the harbour wall. He let me hold it while the ink dried on the chart, which is more than he has allowed me in four years of sweeping his floor.

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The chart is the strange part. Every coast on it is drawn in one hand, and where the lines of the star cross, someone has pricked tiny roses through the vellum, so often that they look like frost on glass. Thorned vines creep out from the centre towards each point, as if the lines were trying to grow. Orrin will not say who made it. He only tells me to keep the ribbon on the pin and never trust a headland that smells of roses.

Yesterday I walked the seawall past the Penhallow yard and saw three men unloading crates stamped with the old king's crest, a crest we were told was melted down after the drowning at Ardent Reach. None of them looked at me. They talked about tides and tithes and a lighthouse that burns blue on the nights nobody sails.

So I have set the needle to the rose nearest the Reach, and tomorrow I will ask Orrin to let me take the boat out with the chart. If my letters stop, do not send the constable. Follow the ribbon, not the map. It is the only honest way to read a compass.