Colour tattoo of three stacked arrowheads over a dotted circle with orange watercolour washes and teal wave lines, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three arrowheads over a watercolour circle

Dotwork · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

Three arrowheads are stacked vertically in the centre, each with dark outlines and shaded facets, over a dotted circle filled with orange, red and yellow washes. Teal and green wave-like linework and soft splashes sit at the top right and left, with a dark ink bloom near the lower left of the circle. The design is centred on the skin with the soft blended colour and the crisp outlines creating contrast.

Dotwork Fine line Upper arm Arrowhead Arrow Circle Wave Splash Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The plough threw up the third arrowhead on the last Tuesday in February, just past the gatepost where the chalk comes through the clay. Uncle Ned knelt in the furrow with his bad knee cracking and held it up to the light like a communion wafer. 'That's three,' he said. 'Your grandfather found the first in 1961, and nobody's had the sense to ask why they keep turning up in a row.'

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I had the old Quality Street tin on the kitchen table by teatime, the one with the two flints already in it, wrapped in a Sainsbury's bag. We laid the new one beside them on the oilcloth. Ned had a theory that the ground keeps things in groups, the way a hen keeps her eggs under her. I told him that was the sort of thing people say after five hours on a tractor that won't start. Outside, the frost had come down so hard the puddles in the yard had skins on them, and the dog wouldn't go past the step.

Next morning the sun came up red over the top field, the low winter sort that looks like it's been left out in the rain. Frost lay in the furrows and the light pooled in them in watery stripes. We walked the headland with the dog and found nothing but a rusted bale spike and a ring pull. Then, by the old elm where the wire fence sags, we stopped. The cloud slid off the sun, and for a minute the whole ground went amber, and the three points of the arrowheads seemed to lift out of the mud and aim at the same spot, a little way off, where the earth had been turned over and turned over again.

Ned knelt, dug with his fingers, and came up with nothing but cold clay and a snail shell. 'Somebody left them,' he said, 'on purpose, like you'd leave a note on the gate for whoever comes next.' I put the lid back on the tin and didn't open the kitchen door for an hour, because for once I wanted to be the one who waited and watched what the frost gave back.