Watercolour-style tattoo of a black and pink compass star with black branches and outlined leaves in teal, purple and blue, on a person's upper back.

Watercolour compass and leaves on upper back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A black compass star with a pink centre sits at the middle of the design, with bare black branches and outlined leaves curving beneath it. Loose teal, purple, pink and blue washes and splatter marks surround the compass and extend upwards and outwards, giving a soft watercolour look. The design is centred on the upper back and fills most of the frame against plain skin.

Botanical Geometric Back Compass Compass rose Leaves Branches Watercolour splashes Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flour gets into everything before the first delivery van grinds up the lane, and by four you have stopped noticing it on your forearms. Dan has the ovens roaring and is swearing at the proving drawer, so it falls to you to climb the stepladder under the back door and lift the brass compass off its hook. Mrs Pell painted its rose herself the year the damp came through the wall: black spokes, a pink heart, and a border of leaves she stencilled in teal and plum when the paint was still wet and nobody had told her to stop. Somebody has to dust it before the light goes grey.

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She blamed the compass for everything. A loaf that sank, a wedding order that went astray, a wet Tuesday with no customers at all. "The star's turned its back on us," she would say, tapping the glass with one floury knuckle, and she would send you out to scrub the step while she muttered about bearings. You thought it was nonsense until the morning the needle finally swung loose and pointed straight at the bakery door, as if something outside had come looking for bread.

Dan calls out that the first tray is ready. You wipe the glass, and the painted star catches the glow from the oven door, its pink centre warm as a coal. Beneath it the branches cross the plaster in black ink, and the leaves bruise to purple where Mrs Pell let the wash run into the grain of the wall.

You hang the compass back on its hook. It points at the window now, where the sky is turning the colour of watered ink, and you tear the heel from the first warm loaf, butter it on the step, and watch the lane fill with light.