Greyscale pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a rose, a compass, rosary beads and a cross, with the word Survive on a banner, in a realistic style.

Rose, compass and rosary with Survive banner

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a rose with leaves at the top, a compass in the centre and a string of rosary beads with a cross at the lower left. The word Survive is written in cursive script across a ribbon banner that curves through the composition. The shading is soft and realistic, with smooth graded tones on the petals, the compass casing and the ribbon, and the image is entirely black and grey on a white background.

Realism Rose Compass Cross Banner Script Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fog came down off the Pennines before four, thick enough that Dad's torch made a yellow wall instead of a path. I had to count the fence posts along the bottom field to know where I was, one hand on the wire, the other holding Nan's old brass compass against my chest so the cold would not get into my fingers.

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The ewe had gone through the gap by the beck, and the lamb with her, and I could hear them bleating somewhere below the hedge but never any closer. Nan always said the compass was for the moors, not for a farm you could walk blind in your sleep, but I opened the lid anyway. The needle swung, shivered, and settled on north with a small certainty I had not felt all day. Her rosary was wound round my wrist, the wooden cross knocking my knuckles each time I stumbled.

Down in the hollow the ewe stood over a wet black lamb, steam lifting off them both like breath from a kettle. I knelt in the bracken, cleared the lamb's nose with my sleeve, and felt for the second one still tangled inside her. When I looked up the fog had thinned enough to show the rose bush by the back door, stripped to thorns, and a light in the kitchen window where Nan was waiting with the kettle on.

We walked them home together, the lamb buttoned inside my coat and the compass back in my pocket, its lid shut. Nan took one look at my soaked sleeves, then at the brass in my hand, and said nothing at all. She only put the kettle on again and set a second cup beside the first, as if she had known all along which way we would come.