Fine line black compass rose tattoo on the inner wrist, shown beside a pink strap with silver cuffs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small compass rose on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small compass rose sits on the inner wrist, with a circular outer ring, an eight-point star and the letters N, E, S and W marking the cardinal points. The linework is thin and dark, with light shading in the points of the star giving it some depth. The tattoo is shown in close crop, with a pink strap and silver cuffs visible at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Compass Compass rose Cardinal points Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The chart came back from the Admiralty stamped twice, which Mr Pell takes to mean they have finally read it. I have spent three weeks on the north mole at Scarrow, pacing out the breakwater with a chain and a tide table, and the only thing I could not get right was the rose. Pell wanted it drawn in the corner of the sheet the way his father drew them, with the eight points sharp and the letters squared off like fence posts. I kept making the east point too long, because the wind off the bay pushes everything east in February, and Pell said a chart is not a weathervane.

Last Thursday the boy from the chandler's brought round a loaf and a bent pencil, and while I was counting out my shillings he asked whether the compass on the wall of the Harbour Inn was the real one. I said I did not know which one he meant. He said the brass one, the one that points at the church and not at the sea. I have decided he is right, and that the church is where we ought to start.

So on Saturday, before the tide turned, I walked the length of the front with a pocket compass and a stub of chalk, marking north on every step of the slipway where the old iron rings are. Mrs Oakes came out to ask whether I had lost something. I told her I had found it, which she thought was a very odd thing to say about a Saturday.

I am sending the sheet north with this letter so you can see the rose before it goes to London. The east point is right now. I checked it against the sun.

Love, Edith