Black and grey fine line tattoo of two crossed arrows with feathered fletching on the inside of an ankle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crossed arrows on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two arrows crossed in an X, each with a pointed head and feathered tail. The linework is thin and even, with the shafts and fletching drawn in solid black ink. The photograph is black and white against a light background, with a dark sleeve at the left edge.

Fine line Ankle Arrow Crossed arrows Feather

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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

The stamp had been cut from pearwood by Anneliese's father, and for twenty-six years it had landed on the same square of paper at the Varnholt crossing: two arrows crossed, their feathered tails spread like wings that had decided against flight.

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At twenty to midnight the snow was coming in sideways, and a boy of perhaps fifteen slid a folded permit under the glass. Anneliese read it twice. Goose quill, forty kilos, consigned to a fletcher called Oskar Reimer on the far side of the river. Nothing in the regulations forbade feathers, so she reached for the stamp.

The sack was heavier than it looked. When the boy hauled it onto the counter the bundle shifted, and she saw a single finished arrow tucked among the quills, its ash shaft pale under the lamp and its tail bound with red thread. A scrap of paper was wrapped round the head. She unfolded it on the desk. Her father's handwriting, a date from the spring he died, and four words: Let the careful ones through.

She pressed the stamp down hard, twice, so the crossed arrows came out sharp on both copies. Then she waved the boy into the snow and kept the arrow on her desk until morning, turning it slowly, deciding who had sent it.