Black and grey traditional style compass rose tattoo with a banner reading not all those who wander are lost, on the forearm.

Compass with banner on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A compass rose sits at the centre, with ribbon banners wrapping across it. The banners carry the words not all those who wander are lost, and the compass points N, E, S and W are marked in black. Shading is grey and black with soft highlights, and scrolling flourishes rise above and below the design on a light skin tone.

Traditional Forearm Compass Compass rose Banner Scroll Flourish Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass compass arrived at the lost property office in a Huntley and Palmers tin, wrapped in a Tuesday edition of the Cumberland News, and nobody on the platform would admit to it. Ada Pell logged it under miscellaneous and set it on the shelf between a single glove and a folding umbrella. The rim carried a ribbon engraved with words the thumbs of a hundred pockets had worn half away, and she could only make out the middle of them. Every morning she read the rest while the kettle boiled.

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Mr Okafor from the ticket hall said it was a sign, the way he said most things were signs, usually before the 9.14 to Settle ran late. Ada was not persuaded until she eased the lid open one wet afternoon and found a strip of paper pressed flat under the glass. It was a pencilled list in small square capitals: Hexham, 3rd March. Kendal, 19th June. Berwick, the week the swifts left. Each line ended with a station name and the same instruction underneath, to be kept for whoever came back for it.

Nobody came back for it. In October a postcard arrived from Penrith, unsigned, showing a sheep on a wall. On the back someone had written that the compass had been right about every road except the one home, and that she should keep it dry. Ada put the postcard in the drawer with the keys nobody had claimed. The next morning she found the compass on the windowsill, lid open, the needle trembling and then settling, pointing past the clock straight at the staff door.

She unlocked the door for the wind and left it open, and the cold came in smelling of coal smoke and wet platform. She did not put the compass back on the shelf. It went into her coat pocket, where it knocked gently against her hip all the way to the bus stop.