Two black line drawings of ornate arrow and feather designs with dotwork shading on tracing paper, showing no body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two dotwork arrow and feather designs

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

Two black ink drawings of arrow-like designs sit on translucent tracing paper. The left design is a leaf-shaped arrowhead with scrolled swirls and a small ornamental tail, and the right is a feather-like form on a thin shaft. Both use fine, confident linework with stippled dots for shading and a mostly empty background.

Dotwork Arrow Arrowhead Feather Swirl Ornament Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, settle your feet, because the floor here is sprung and it will take you wherever it likes. I'll tell you about Nell Harrow, who fletched arrows in the loft above the Corn Exchange in Mirefield, back when the hall below had a band that couldn't keep time and a caller who couldn't keep his teeth in.

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Nell made two kinds of arrow. The first had a leaf for a head, cut so thin you could read the grain through it, and she scrolled its shoulders with a bradawl until they curled like the bracken on the moor. The second she fletched with goose feather, pinned on with waxed silk, and she never sold one. Her father asked why. She said a point goes where it is aimed, but a feather goes where the wind decides, and she hadn't yet made up her mind which she wanted to be.

A young man called Edwin Lusk climbed the loft stairs one wet Thursday, wanting something to win a dance with. Nell sold him the leaf-headed arrow for a shilling and told him it would hit whatever he aimed at, provided he aimed honestly. He danced with the wrong girl that night. The right girl watched from the gallery with a feather in her hair, one Nell had given her for nothing because she had been sweeping the loft floor and admired the way she swept.

Years later Edwin came back up those stairs with the arrow still whole, the leaf unchipped. He said it had never flown anywhere, that it sat on his mantel and reminded him of his mistake. Nell took it from him, turned it over, and hung it on a nail above the bandstand, where it still is. Now, who's got a partner? Go on, the band's warming up and the floor is waiting.