Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Crossed arrows design in two versions
Black and grey · Flash
The image shows two stacked panels of a hand-drawn design of two arrows crossing in an X shape on plain paper. The arrowheads and tail feathers are drawn in black ink with outlines, and the top panel has outlined heads while the lower panel fills the upper-right head solid black. The drawings are monochrome with no shading, and each panel is centred on a plain light grey background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The board at the end of the north pier has been yours since your uncle's knuckles stiffened. Each dawn you stand on an upturned bucket with a tin of black paint and redraw the two arrows, because the sea air rubs them out overnight. The hollow heads point out past the Skerrow light, where the fleet works the banks. The solid one you keep for the boats already home.
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Eleven boats went out on Tuesday. The wind backed east by noon and the sky went the colour of wet slate, and by four o'clock you had counted only nine hulls threading the gap. You stood with the brush dripping onto your boot and filled nothing in. Your mother used to say the sea keeps a tally, that it is a poor bookkeeper but never forgets a name.
The tenth boat came in at dusk, the Morag Rose with her engine coughing and her skipper waving a jacket above his head. You climbed down and filled the solid head of the arrow that points toward the harbour mouth, the way you have done since you were nine. Then you climbed back up and dotted the hollow arrow beside the eleventh name, the one still out there.
The tide took the dot before morning, as it always does, so you stood on the bucket again and painted it back in.
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