Small fine line black arrow tattoo on the outer ankle of a bare foot, against a red brick wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Two bare feet rest together against a sunlit red brick wall, photographed from above. A small black arrow sits on the outer side of one ankle, drawn with thin, even linework and no shading. The black ink is the only colour accent against the warm skin and brick tones.

Fine line Ankle Arrow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Master Hollis never let me fletch on a Monday. He said the feathers held the damp from the weekend, and a goose wing wants a dry hand. So on Tuesdays I sat on an upturned crate against the south wall of the yard, where the old brick held the sun until gone six, and I bound grey goose feathers to ash shafts with waxed silk while the swifts screamed over the roofs of Maidstone.

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The arrow I remember best was the smallest I ever made. A boy from the abbey school had paid a penny for it, asking for something he could carry in his waistcoat pocket for luck. I cut the shaft no longer than my palm, set three feathers no bigger than a moth's wing, and filed the head so fine it could barely pierce a cheese rind. Master Hollis turned it over in his thick fingers and laughed. "That will never fly true," he said. "It only goes where you point it by hand."

The boy came back at Michaelmas to say he had given it away. A girl from the almshouse on Week Street had asked to hold it, and she had tucked it into the strap of her shoe and walked all the way to the market with it, because she said she had never been so far from home and wanted something small that pointed the right way. The boy wanted another penny's worth, and I did not know what to tell him.

Master Hollis said nothing. He only dragged a fresh crate into the sun and dropped a bundle of goose feathers beside it. I cut the next shaft the same length, bound the feathers, and sat with my back warm against the brick until the light went off the wall.