Black and grey drawing of a tattoo design with poppies, a compass and a moth, shown on paper with no body placement visible.

Poppies, compass and moth design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pen or pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing several poppy flowers with layered petals around a vintage compass. A moth rests on the top of the compass face. The linework and fine shading give the petals and compass dial depth, and the design is rendered entirely in black and grey on a pale sheet.

Botanical Realism Poppy Compass Moth Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind has not dropped once since we left the hut at Col Brannoch, and the compass has stopped being an instrument and become a kind of prayer. Mr Ffrench keeps tapping the glass with his thumbnail as though the needle might change its mind. We have walked four days up the pass, and on the third the poppies began, growing out of the scree in ragged orange, then paler, then nearly white where the snow still lay in the gullies.

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Ffrench says the flowers are a bad sign, that they only grow where the ground has been turned by avalanche, and that wherever they grow the mountain has lately been unkind. I have decided to disbelieve him. This morning a grey moth settled on the lid of the compass while we ate bread on a flat stone. It sat there with its wings open like a folded map, and Ffrench would not let me brush it off. He said a moth on the needle means a traveller will be led home. I said it only means the moth is tired.

We reach the saddle by noon. Below us the valley is a blue thumbprint under cloud, and the needle, which has swung wildly all morning, finally settles on north and holds. Ffrench takes off his cap. I find I am crying, which is absurd, and I say so, and he tells me the wind is responsible for everything, which is the kindest lie he knows.

I have pressed one poppy between the pages of this letter, so you will receive it flattened and faintly grey, like the petals in the drawing I sent you. Tell Mother the moth went down into the valley ahead of us. Tell her I am coming home by the road.