Fine line black arrow tattoos on the forearms of two crossed arms against a plain light background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching arrow tattoos on crossed forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms cross in an X shape, each showing matching black fine line arrows. The main set of three arrows runs diagonally down one forearm, with a matching set on the other wrist and a small arrow near the elbow of the second arm. The thin, even linework is in black ink on pale skin, with a plain grey background and a grey sleeve at the right edge.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Matching pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The goose feathers have to come from the same wing, or the shafts will not fly together. My father taught me that over a bench littered with split reed, and I have never forgotten it, though I have forgotten most of what else he said. So when Demas and Corin came into the workshop above the harbour in the month of the first rains, asking for matching arrows, I told them to bring me a wing from one bird and then come back.

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They argued the whole time I bound the fletching. Corin wanted the barbs cut long for hunting in the hills above Kallis. Demas wanted them short for the crossbow he had traded his mule to buy. I told them both to hush. A pair that flies true is a pair that agrees on nothing but the line. I bound three shafts apiece, notched them, and set each feather so that every arrow carried a little cut of its twin's wing.

Two summers later Demas came back alone, thinner, and asked for three new arrows of the same make. When I asked after Corin, he said the hills had been kinder to the bow than to the boy. Then he laid the old shafts on my bench and crossed them, one over the other, the way they had lain the day they were bought. He wanted the pattern kept, he said, in something that would not wear away.

He left with the new arrows wrapped in oiled linen. Before the rains came, I cut a fourth shaft from what was left of the wing, fletched it, and laid it across the others on the bench, crossed like two arms folded in greeting. Nobody has bought that one. It stays where it fell, pointing at the door, waiting for someone to come in and say which way they mean to fly.