Black ink forearm tattoo of mountains, pine trees and a moon inside a dotted circle with triangles, above a sprig of leaves.

Mountain, pine and moon in a dotted compass circle

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm tattoo showing a mountain range, a row of pine trees and a crescent-shaped moon with small stars, enclosed in a ring of dashed lines and a dotted circle with small triangular points. A sprig of leaves and buds, tied with a bow, curves across the lower part of the arm. The work uses fine black linework and stippled shading on pale skin, with no colour ink, and the design is centred on the forearm.

Geometric Botanical Forearm Mountain Pine tree Moon Star Compass Triangle Dotted circle Sprig Leaves Bud

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last northbound has already pulled out by the time you find the sprig, wedged behind the timetable frame on platform two. Someone has tied the stems with a loop of green thread and left the bow a little lopsided, the way a person does when they are in a hurry or trying not to cry. You hold it up to the lamp. The buds are still closed.

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Lost property has its own ledger, a hardback with a cracked spine that Mrs Adair kept before she retired, and you open it at the page for the previous Thursday. Umbrella, child's mitten, a tin of boiled sweets. Nothing for the sprig. You write it in anyway: one sprig, tied, no name.

Outside the waiting room the hills sit against a sky with a moon in it, a hard white crescent over the ridge where the firs stand in a row like people waiting to be called. Someone has drawn a compass rose in biro on the back of an old poster pinned by the ticket window, with the north point pricked through by a drawing pin. Little triangles mark each summit, and a dotted ring runs around the whole thing like a route someone meant to walk. You think the man who went up the far pass last winter must have carried a map like that.

At six the first train comes in grey and empty. You walk to the end of the platform and lay the sprig on the warm bench where the wind cannot reach it, and you leave the ledger open at the page, so whoever comes back for it will know where to look.