Fine line black arrow tattoo centred on the upper back of a woman with her hair in a bun, facing the sea.

Small arrow tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small black arrow sits on the upper back, centred between the shoulder blades, with a thin shaft and a tiny fletched tail. The linework is crisp and delicate, and the ink appears solid black with no shading. The woman is seen from behind against a calm sea and pale blue sky, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Fine line Back Arrow Sea Beach

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

'Hold the line, Tomas, don't let it run out over the lip of the groyne.' The mortar was still warm from the last firing, and the gun crew had stopped pretending they weren't watching the grey hull on the Skerry rocks. Nell Pascoe pressed her thumb to the brass sight and waited for the swell to lift the wreck into the gap between two black teeth of stone.

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The thing about a line rocket, her father used to say, is that it is only an arrow with a manners problem. It must not be too eager, or it clears the mast and drops into the spray. It must not be too shy, or the men on deck watch it fall short and die of hope. Nell had been taught to lay it flat and low, the way a bowman sights a heron, and to trust that the wind would come round at the last moment whether she asked it or not.

She fired on the third lift. The rocket went out with a sound like tearing canvas, the thin tail of rope streaming behind it, and for one long breath it hung over the white water as if the sea had forgotten to pull it down. Then it dropped across the deck rail. A man stood, lifted a hand, and began hauling.

Afterwards the Coastguard captain asked who had laid the sight, and the crew pointed at her, a girl with her hair knotted against the salt. She did not tell him she had practised all winter on a cart-shaft driven into the shingle, or that the little wooden arrow she had carved for luck was still in her pocket, its notches worn smooth by her thumb. She only watched the rope go taut, and the sea, for once, did as it was told.