Ornate compass rose design
Geometric · Black and grey · Flash
A detailed drawing of a compass rose with eight-pointed star arms, a fleur-de-lis at the north point and a ring of lettering reading UNE VIE EXTRAORDINAIRE. The compass centre has a fine radial pattern surrounded by scrolled ornament, and the shading uses soft greys with sharp black highlights. The design is centred on a plain white background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Mr Quayle set the rose on the drawing board and tapped its centre with his pencil. 'Eight winds,' he said, 'and the fleur-de-lis at the top, because a Frenchman once decided north should look like a lily. Don't argue with Frenchmen. Shade it grey, Tilly, not black. Black is for people who have never been wrong.'
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The words round the ring had been his before they were anyone's. He had painted UNE VIE EXTRAORDINAIRE above the chart-room door the year he took the lease, and on every rose since. In twenty years he had never once left the Severn. Each morning he unlocked the shop, lit the stove, and sat with his spectacles pushed up while the ships went past the window without him. I asked him once whether he regretted it. He said regret was only a bearing you had not yet taken.
The Cape captain collected the finished chart in March. He held it to the window, frowned at the rose, then laughed. I had shaded the central radial pattern so finely that the lines seemed to turn, and the innermost ring now leaned towards the door. 'Your apprentice has set me a course,' he said. Quayle studied the drawing for a long while, then took off his spectacles and folded them into my hand. 'Go on, then,' he said. 'The door's open, and you've been drawing other people's journeys for long enough.'
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