Black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo with a compass star and two hanging feathers on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher with compass star on ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dreamcatcher hoop sits centrally on the side of the torso, with a compass-style star in its middle and two shaded feathers hanging from the base. The linework is dark and clean, with grey shading on the feathers and the hoop's inner web. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the image is framed on the ribs with a white fabric top pulled up at the upper edge.

Ribs Dreamcatcher Compass Star Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

No, sit down, the net can wait, it has waited since Tuesday. Pass me that mug. My grandfather had a hoop like this nailed over the wheelhouse door of the Mary Ellen out of Whitby, willow bent into a ring and strung with sinew, with a compass rose painted in the middle. The old men said a dreamcatcher catches what you're dreaming of and a compass tells you where you're going, and a man in fog needs both.

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The winter of the great murk, the boat went out after cod and the glass fell like a stone. Eleven boats never came back that week. The Mary Ellen was caught off the Dogger with the wind backing round and not a star to steer by. Grandfather tied two gull feathers to the bottom of the hoop, the way his mother had taught him, and told the crew to keep their eyes on the star in the centre and not on the sea.

They steered by that painted star for nine hours, the feathers knocking the wheel with every roll. When the fog lifted at dawn they were off Flamborough with a full hold and a skipper who'd stopped praying. The feathers came back with two new nicks in them, and he never once let anyone throw them away.

So when you ask why the hoop hangs in my hall, I'll tell you it isn't for catching dreams. It's so I remember which way is north when the lights go out. Now, the net.