Watercolour tattoo of a compass and an anchor with blue, purple and green splashes and thin black triangle lines, on the forearm.

Watercolour compass and anchor on forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A compass sits in the foreground with a smaller open compass case showing an anchor behind it, both drawn with grey shading and metallic rims. Loose watercolour washes in blue, purple, pink and green spread around the subject, with splatter marks and fine black linework forming triangles below. The colour ink dominates the composition, and the design is set against plain skin with a soft, unfocused background.

Forearm Compass Anchor Watercolour splashes Triangle Geometric line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm, the abbot has taken the good blue from the scriptorium for the new psalter, so you will have to forgive the colour I am using here. It is what was left in the bottom of the pot, thinned with rainwater and smelling faintly of the shellfish we boil for glue. The wind off the Skerry Sound has found every crack in the shutters since Michaelmas, and the washes dry before I can lift them, so the sea I paint in these margins never quite stays where I put it.

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Your compass is still on the sill beside the lamp. Each morning I open its brass case as you asked, to see that the needle swings north and does not stick. It does, though the frost has put a hairline across the glass. Prior Osric found me at it on Tuesday and asked whether I was praying or sulking. I told him I was keeping the anchor in view, since that is what your father taught us to do when the tide turns and the boats are still out.

The lay brother from Hollin brought word on the Thursday boat that the Margaret Ann was seen beating past the Gannet Rock with her topsail torn, and he could say no more. I have set the case on the altar cloth beside the reliquary and told nobody but the cook, who gave me an extra loaf and said nothing. I have not yet decided whether to pray for the ship or for you, and I suspect God has already sorted it between us.

So I have done what a monk does with a sorrow and a spare sheet. I have drawn the compass on the back of this page in the blue that is left, with a second case open beside it and an anchor inside, so that when you come up the causeway you will see which way I have been facing. Keep your needle true, and bring the ink back with you. Your brother in the cold house, Cuthbert.