Fine line black tattoo of crossed arrows with the letters M and R and two small dots on a forearm, covered with cling film and tape.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crossed arrows with M and R on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A fresh black tattoo on the outer forearm shows two crossed arrows with a small M above the centre and an R below it, plus two small dots. The linework is thin and even, with solid black fills on the arrowheads and fletching. The skin is covered with clear cling film and beige tape, and the background shows a wooden floor and a bed.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Crossed arrows Letter Initial Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The snow closed the pass on Tuesday and it has not reopened, so I am writing this at the long table by the kitchen range, where the landlord's wife lets me have the good lamp if I promise not to spill ink on the cloth. Outside, the drifts have buried the stile to the height of a man's shoulder. Nobody has come up from the valley since the carrier turned back at the bridge.

You will laugh, but the crossed arrows are doing their work. Your father's old brass compass is strapped to my pack, and the needle still swings true to north. I have walked the lane twice to mark where the two dots of cairn stones stand, one at the gate and one at the bend. I had thought the letters would be enough to find me home: M for the mill road, R for the ridge. The landlord laughed and said the road has no letters on it, only snow.

On the third morning the ostler's boy came in shaking white powder from his cap and said the wind had shifted, and a clear sky showed over the eastern fell. We went out together, and I saw what my arrows meant. The four points I had sketched on the back of the inn bill lined up exactly with the old drovers' track, the one nobody uses now. I followed it down past the frozen weir to the mill.

You were already at the door with the lantern lit, as if you had worked out the arithmetic long before I had. Come and fetch me in the spring, when the lane is clear and the arrows are no use to anyone but us.