Coloured pencil drawing of a fox with a compass and green ribbon, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fox and compass design

Colour · Flash

A fox's head and shoulders rest behind a grey compass with its needle pointing towards the south west, and a green ribbon wraps around the compass and the fox's body. The fox is drawn in fine pencil strokes with orange, brown and grey shading for the fur, and the compass has soft grey shading and small letters for the compass points. The fox fills the upper and central part of the page on a cream background, with its bushy tail curling at the bottom.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the fox came back to the bins again last night, bold as you like, and I didn't shoo it off. Mam says foxes bring bad luck to a pit row, but I told her it had more sense than the lot of us, slipping under the fence when the banksman wasn't looking.

Keep reading

The compass you left on the windowsill is still pointing south west, the way you said it always did when the needle was true. I've tapped the glass a dozen times and it won't budge. Mr Haley in the lamp room says the steel in the cage shoves everything about, and that a compass is only as honest as the ground under it. I tied the green ribbon from your Sunday tie round it so the little ones wouldn't carry it off to play with.

Yesterday the whistle went at ten past two and I stood at the gate with my apron still on until Dougie Pratt came up the lane on his own. Your name wasn't on the list he'd been given. I have been sensible about it all day, and I am going to be sensible tomorrow too, because someone in this house has to be.

If you are reading this somewhere south west of Ferryhill, keep the compass in your pocket and walk towards the sun in the afternoon. The fox is out on the wall now, sitting very upright, watching the lane as if it knows the way home. Your loving sister, Nan.

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