Small black fine line arrow tattoo with a triangular head and layered feather fletching, on the inner wrist and forearm of a person resting on a grey knitted jumper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black arrow runs diagonally across the wrist, with a triangular arrowhead at the top and layered, stepped feather shapes at the base. The linework is fine and even, with a few small dots near the fletching adding texture. The tattoo is shown in greyscale against soft, warm-toned skin and a textured grey knitted fabric.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Arrow Feather Triangle

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The old surveyor had a rule about arrows: never fletch one you would not trust to cross the line. I learned it at fourteen, perched on an upturned bucket in his workshop above the Kessel bridge, while he split goose quills with a blade thinner than an eyelash. He cut each feather into stepped layers, three tiers to a side, so the vanes would catch the wind like the branches of a spruce. "Wind is a liar," he said, "but a well-made fletch tells the truth about it."

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Every marker stone along the ridge bore a cut triangle, pointing north towards the pass. Where a shaft was bound to a post beneath one, smugglers knew the path was clear, and midwives knew which sheep track led down to the valley farms without the customs men. Nobody wrote anything down. The arrows did the talking, bound with red thread, with a single dot of ink near the nock for each safe crossing.

The winter I turned sixteen, the guards doubled and the surveyor's hands shook too badly to tie a knot. I took his bow and his last shaft and went up alone in the sleet. At the stone I found the post already bound with a shaft that was not ours, its fletching torn and its nock dotted twice, a message from someone who had got over and wanted us to know it.

I tied my own arrow beside it, three turns of thread, the way he had taught me, and loosed it over the wall into the white. It flew true, the stepped feathers humming, and I stood in the sleet listening for the soft thud of it landing on the far side.