Fine line black tattoo of four arrows with feathered fletching running down a forearm, with a metal bracelet worn above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four arrows down a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Four arrows of differing sizes run diagonally down the inner forearm, each with a fine outlined shaft and a simple arrowhead, and several have feathered or hatched fletching at the tail. The linework is thin and even, with light stippled texture in the fletching and no solid shading. The ink is dark black on a light, slightly warm skin tone, with a silver chain bracelet and a grey fabric backdrop in the background.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Arrowhead Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Your uncle hands you the fletching knife on the last Saturday of August, when the windfalls are already soft in the grass under the cider trees. He has four ash shafts across his knees and he is not pleased with the feathers. Goose for the long ones, he says, hen pheasant for the short quick one, and you split the quill with your thumbnail the way he taught you before you could reach the bowstring.

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The orchard is older than anyone's memory. Rows of Kingston Black lean towards the Severn as if listening for a boat. You shoot the first arrow at the gap in the wall where the rooks gather at dusk, and it goes wide into the nettles. Your uncle laughs, a dry sound, and says the wood is straight and the fault is in your elbow. You draw the second, feel the string bite the tab of your glove, and loose it at the last green pear on the far tree.

The third arrow you keep. Its head is filed from an old hay-rake tine and you wind a strip of red wool around the nock so you will know it later. Your uncle takes the fourth, the thin one with hatched feathers, and does not shoot it. He nods up at the sky instead, where a line of swifts is already turning south a month early, as though someone had called them off the roofs.

By dark you have the first arrow out of the wall and the second out of the pear. The third is still in the trunk, red wool bright against the bark. Your uncle's boots are wet with juice and his hand is on your shoulder. You carry the fourth arrow home, and only at the gate do you notice its feathers are dusted with pollen, gold as the last light on the orchard floor.