Black line drawing of a ribcage with a bow and arrow, flanked by flowers and a sunburst above, captioned Sagittarius, in a botanical illustration style.

Sagittarius ribcage, bow and flowers

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical black ink drawing shows a ribcage framed by a drawn bow and arrow, with a sunburst above and leafy flowers on either side. The linework is fine and even, with hatching on the ribs and arrow and small dots scattered around the flowers. Below the drawing, the word Sagittarius and a short italic line of text sit on a plain white background.

Botanical Ribcage Flower Sunburst Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The yew bow had hung in the cloister for longer than anyone could say, its string gone grey with damp. On the morning of the first hard frost, Brother Osric took it down from its hook without asking, because the abbot had gone to the infirmary and the novices were already lined up along the wall with their hands tucked into their sleeves.

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Father Edric came back in time to see the first three arrows drop into the mud of the lower garth. He did not scold them. He pointed east, where the sun was still a rumour behind the moor, and said an arrow goes to where the light is going to be, and a man who aims at the light he can see is always late. The novices stamped their feet and tried again.

Osric was the thinnest of them. He had a cough that lived in his chest through the winter and a habit of breathing carefully, as if the air might be taken back. When his turn came he drew the bow only as far as his ribs would let him. The string sang once, low, and the arrow went up into the haze with no more fuss than a rook leaving a field.

It came down in the far orchard, caught in the frozen crook of a pear tree. When the brothers went to fetch it they found the shaft unbroken and the head bright. Edric turned it over in his fingers and said a bow is only as strong as the thing that bends it, and that a chest which has cracked can hold a string as well as any other. Osric went back to the orchard alone that afternoon, and the frost on the pear branches was still catching the last of the sun.