Two inner forearms crossed over each other, each with a compass rose tattoo in fine line, the left in blue ink and the right in grey.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching compass rose tattoos on wrists

Fine line · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two arms are crossed so that the inner wrists face the camera, each bearing a compass rose. The left design is a blue eight-pointed star with a layered, petal-like centre and small dots around it, with cardinal letters at the points. The right design is a grey compass rose with fine radiating lines, a ringed centre and scattered dots, with cardinal letters at its points.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm says the sea does not forgive a bad bearing, and so I write this with the tallow lamp guttering beside the chart table, hoping you will forgive my hand, which shakes less than it did in the spring. The copy of your star came in the same post as the new ink, and I have pinned it above the drying rack where the wind from the scriptorium door cannot reach it. You will see I have drawn the petals of the centre as you asked, eight of them, each one folded like a lily that has been told to keep its secret.

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The bishop's man came on Tuesday to ask why the abbey still pays for a compass-maker when every ship now carries a needle in a brass box. I told him that a needle points north because it has been persuaded to, and a rose is what a man draws when he wants to remember that persuasion costs something. He did not understand and went back to his mule. Brother Anselm laughed until he coughed, and then he asked me to read him the bit about the Ebro, which you will recall he has never once let me finish.

I am sending the original rose back with this letter, so that you may set it against your own wrist and tell me whether the lines run true. If the grey one on your arm has faded at the edges, do not be alarmed. The best routes are the ones the sun has softened. Keep the south point near the pulse, where it is easiest to find in the dark, and write to me when the harbour frosts have lifted.

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