Black fine line arrow tattoo with a feathered head, three dots and a open arrowhead on the lower back.

Fine line arrow on the lower back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A single arrow runs horizontally across the skin, with an outlined feathered head on the left, three solid dots in the shaft and an open chevron tip on the right. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the ink is solid black. The arrow sits centred on the frame against pale skin, with a dark garment at the top and a hand holding the fabric at the lower left.

Fine line Back Arrow Feather Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell counted the feathers twice before she trusted them. Grey goose, split down the quill, laid out on the bench in rows like folded hands. Her uncle Walter watched from the stool by the window, pipe cold between his teeth, and said nothing, which was how he taught most things. The shafts leaned against the wall behind him, ash gone pale from a winter's seasoning, straight as a sermon.

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Each finished arrow got its marks near the nock, burned in with a heated awl the way the fletchers at Holt had always done. One dot for every shaft that came home from the butts unbroken. Three dots meant the batch was sound. Walter had once told her a fletcher's count was the only honest ledger in the parish, because a bad arrow tells on itself the first time it is loosed. The heads came up from the smith in Wroxham in a canvas bag, barbed and open-throated, and hissed when she dropped them into the tub of oil.

On the Thursday before the county shoot, Tom Ardley came in with a snapped shaft and a face like wet slate. He had loosed his best arrow at the rooks over the churchyard and it had come back to him split down the middle. Walter turned the pieces over in the window light and asked Nell how many dots the batch needed. Three, she said. He shook his head. Count the ones that flew, he said, not the ones you made.

She had one more shaft of her own, the first she had made without Walter at her elbow, and it had flown true across the marsh edge on Tuesday. Nell heated the awl until it glowed the colour of a late sun and pressed it to the ash above the feathers, holding it longer than she needed to. The mark hissed and bloomed black. Then she laid the shaft in the rack beside his, wiped her hands on her apron, and went out to the water meadow where the wind was coming in off the Broads.