Black linework tattoo of two crossed arrows with diamond and chevron patterns and small dotted accents, in a geometric fine line style on the inner forearm.

Crossed arrows and diamonds on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two arrows crossing in an X, with a stacked pair of diamond shapes at the centre filled with chevron lines, small dots and stippled shading. Small radiating marks sit either side of the centre. The design is in clean black linework with no colour, and it is shown up close on a forearm against a red fabric and a blurred background.

Fine line Geometric Dotwork Forearm Arrow Diamond Chevron Dot Sunburst Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had been feathering shafts since the first frost, and her father's hands had gone too stiff to hold the jig steady. The shop smelt of linseed and cedar, and cold came through the door every time the lad from the mill went out. She pressed the last fletch into place and laid the arrow on the rack beside its twin, the two crossed the way her father always said brought luck to a bowstring.

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Mr Ashdown from the manor had ordered forty for the Michaelmas shoot, and he wanted them matched: every fletch the same grey-barred feather, every nock cut true. Nell had cut the diamonds into the ash shafts with a bone knife, the way her grandmother had, chevrons down the spine so the glue would bite, a dot pressed where the bowyer's mark belonged. She stippled the last stretch with the point of a needle until the grain looked like frost on a gate.

On the night before delivery the wind dropped, and a sunburst of ice appeared on the window glass, thin spikes like the rays a child draws beside the sun. Her father came down in his nightshirt, looked at the rack, and said nothing for a long time. Then he lifted the two crossed arrows from the top, laid them on the bench, and tapped the place where the shafts met. "Those aren't for Ashdown," he said. "Those are for the boy who sails out of Whitby."

She did not ask which boy. She wrapped the arrows in oiled cloth and put them in the chest under the window, where the frost kept growing its thin, patient rays until morning.