Fine line design of a small solid star above a thin vertical line, with the words TRUE NORTH in spaced capitals beneath, on a white background.

Star above a line with True North lettering

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A small solid five-pointed star sits above a single thin vertical line that runs down the centre of the image. The words TRUE NORTH are set in widely spaced capitals below the line. The linework is uniform and minimal, in black on a plain white background with generous space around the composition.

Fine line Lettering Star Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the lamp at Carrick Point has been dark since Tuesday because the new wick won't sit straight, and Mr Ogilvie says he'll have it right by the spring tides, though I have stopped believing him. I am writing because you asked in your last letter how I manage the nights without the light to steer by, and I think I have an answer now, which is an odd thing to say about a thing I was never meant to need.

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You remember the brass compass mother kept on the windowsill, the one with the cracked glass. Last week I took it out to the rocks below the cottage and sat there with the wind pulling my hair loose, watching the single star that comes up first over the water, the one she always called the sailor's pin. I lined the needle up with the sea wall and then with the star and found they did not agree at all. The needle wanted to go west. The star wanted to go somewhere I could not see from the bottom of the cliff.

So I did what she used to make us do on the shingle, which was to put a stick in the sand and wait for the shadow to show the line. I waited until my feet were numb and the tide had come up to the second stone. When I looked back at the stick, the shadow pointed straight up the slope toward the chapel roof, and the star was sitting just above it, very small and very steady, exactly where it had been all along.

I do not know what the lamp will do once it is mended, Nell, but I think I will keep the stick. Come home at Christmas if the roads hold, and I will show you the place on the sand where I stood.