Fine line black tattoo of three feathered arrows running diagonally down the inner forearm, with dot and diamond details along the shafts.

Three arrows running down a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three arrows with feathered fletching run diagonally along the forearm, each with a thin shaft marked by small dots and diamond shapes. The linework is fine and even, with sparing hatched shading in the feathers and no solid fill. The tattoo is black ink only on a light skin tone against a plain grey background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Arrow Feather Diamond Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Maud Harrow had feathered arrows for the Skerrowe fleet since her father's hands gave out, and she knew every goose quill by its curl. On the morning the Gannet's crew went out past the bar, she sat at the trestle in the chandlery with three shafts across her knees, binding the fletching with waxed thread while the gulls argued over fish heads on the quay.

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Her father had taught her the marks. Small dots for every fathom of line, a diamond where the shaft ran true, and never a knot that couldn't be undone with a thumbnail. "A man should read his arrow from the shore," he used to say, "same as he reads the weather." She pressed each vane flat, counted the barbs on the left, counted them again on the right, and sent the first arrow up to the bowman at the north stair without a word.

The second went to Ruth Ashby, who had come asking for something to fire over the water at a boat that had not come back on the tide. Maud did not ask what she wanted it for. She only lengthened the shaft by three dots and tied on a pennant of red wool, the colour the lifeboat men would know.

The third she kept. It had the longest feathers, the ones that turned like smoke when the wind came off the bay. At dusk the Gannet's light showed past the bar, low and steady, and Maud walked to the harbour wall with the arrow under her arm. When the boat's bow swung toward the slip, she laid it on the stones where anyone could pick it up, pointing home.