Black and grey bicycle tattoos with compass points and a line of small serif lettering, shown on the upper thighs of a person wearing a black top.

Two bicycles and lettering on the thighs

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

Two detailed black and grey bicycle illustrations sit on the upper thighs, one on each leg, each surrounded by compass point letters. A short block of serif lettering runs down the left thigh beneath the bicycle. The shading is fine and engraved in character, and the photo is framed from the waist down with a plain indoor background.

Thigh Bicycle Compass Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The map had worn through along the same fold somewhere past the salt flats, and Ruth held the two halves together with her thumbs while the wind tried to take them. Her brother Owen rode ahead on the road bike he had bought off a retired postman in Carlisle, the one with a brass bell that rang every time he hit a rut. She had the older frame, heavier, its chain already spitting grit. They had agreed the route in a Penrith pub with a biro and a beer mat, and the beer mat was long gone.

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Owen stopped where the tarmac bent away from the scrub and waited for her, one foot down, grinning at the horizon as if he had ordered it. Somewhere out there, he said, there's a thrill, and he meant it the way he had meant it at eleven, when he drew a compass rose on the back of her school jotter and marked every point wrong on purpose. She corrected him now. North was where the wind came from, she said, which was not true, and he knew it was not true, and that was the point.

They rode until the road forgot it was a road. A cattle grid rattled under them, then a line of fence posts with no fence between, then a dry wash and a sky so wide it seemed to tilt. Ruth checked the sun against her watch the way their father had taught them, and for once it agreed with her. She turned the front wheel where the shadow fell and pushed on, and behind her Owen's bell rang twice, the way it always did when he was pleased with himself.

By evening they reached a petrol station with one pump and a dog asleep across the step. Ruth bought two bottles of water and a postcard of a lake neither of them had seen. On the back she wrote, We went the wrong way and it was the right way, and she pushed it through the letterbox of the shop, since the girl at the till had gone home. They laughed all the way back to the bikes.