Winged creature wrapped around a compass rose

Mixed · Flash

A loose ink drawing shows a winged creature with feathered or membranous wings spreading around a central compass rose, with a long curling tail trailing below. The linework is sketchy and energetic, with heavy dark teal strokes on the wings and finer hatching on the compass face, and a red letter N marks the north point. The composition is centred on a fine crosshair guide that extends beyond the design, with no body part visible.

Compass Compass rose Wing Tail North

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm, you asked me to stop writing about the bird, and I have tried. But it came down again last night over the scriptorium roof, and when the bell stopped it was still there, black wings folded over the lead, its tail hanging into the rain gutter like a bell rope. I did not go up. I went to the window and counted the feathers that caught the lamplight. Forty-one before I lost count.

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Prior Osric says it is a kite, or an owl grown large from eating the sheep at Hollin Fold. Perhaps. But the bird has never once turned its head toward the chapel, only toward my table, where I have been ruling the great chart of the coast for the abbey's new charter. Each morning the ink I left wet bears a smear pointing north, as though something had leaned across the parchment to read it.

Yesterday I finished the compass rose. I drew it with the old brass dividers, eight points, the fleur on the north. When I set down the pen to pray, the bird was on the sill, watching the rose with one amber eye. Then it stretched its wings across the whole sheet, and the lines of the rose went quiet under its shadow, the way a sea goes flat before a squall.

I have sealed the chart in the cupboard with the tallow. Tell the prior I will not be needing the north pole. The creature wants a direction, and I am tired of pointing it.