Black crossed arrows tattoo with hatched shading and dotwork accents on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crossed arrows on an upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arrows cross in an X shape, with feathered fletching and arrowheads drawn in engraved-style hatching. Small dots sit beside the design, and the solid black linework is shaded in grey on pale skin. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against a plain light background, with dark clothing at the left edge.

Blackwork Traditional Upper arm Arrow Crossed arrows Arrowhead Fletching Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bale behind the target had been patched with gaffer tape so often it looked like a map of somewhere that had since flooded, and Dad would not let me replace it. "The bale's got character," he said, which was what he said about the generator, the dodgems and his own knees. Forty pence a go, three arrows, and a teddy the colour of weak tea for anyone who split the gold. Nobody had split the gold since we left Grantham in April.

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Then Kit Marsh started coming, every evening for a week, always in the same grey hoodie, always paying in coppers he counted out one at a time on the counter. He hardly spoke. He watched my father fletch spare arrows at the back of the van, sliding pheasant feathers into the notches with his thumb, and asked why the feathers were cut at an angle. "So it spins," Dad said. "So it goes where you're looking, not where you're pointing." Kit nodded as if he'd been waiting years for someone to tell him that.

On the Friday he brought no coppers. He brought a letter from a hospital in Nottingham, folded into eighths, and asked whether he could take one shot for the bear, and whether, if he hit the gold, the bear could go to a girl called Priya on the children's ward, who had asked for something soft to hold. Dad read the letter twice, then lifted the bear down from the top shelf himself and set it on the counter like it was made of glass.

Kit's first arrow hit the bale. The second rattled the frame. For the third he held two shafts crossed in his fist for a long while, then let one go with the stillness of someone who had decided something. It split the gold clean down the middle. Dad didn't cheer. He just peeled the tape off the bale, strip by strip, and left the old wood bare for the rest of the season.