Fine line black tattoo of a world map overlaid with compass rings and an arrow, shown on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

World map with compass and arrow on arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A fine black linework tattoo shows a world map with continents outlined, overlaid on dotted and solid compass rings. A long arrow passes horizontally through the map and another arrow with a diamond tip and feathered fletching runs vertically from the top and bottom. The image is in black ink on pale skin with a plain, uncluttered background.

Fine line Geometric Upper arm World map Compass Arrow Globe Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer the range, you, before your fingers crack. No, the kettle can wait. Your great-uncle Tomas came home from the docks at Hull with a paper map in his coat, and it was the only thing he owned that wasn't mud or wool. It was the winter the beck froze to the stone bridge and the ewes wouldn't leave the byre. He spread that map across the kitchen table and pinned the corners with the salt cellar, the bread knife and two cold potatoes. Then he said, 'Here is us, and here is everywhere else.'

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He had his father's brass compass, and he set it on the paper and turned the whole table until the needle agreed with the clock on the wall. With the rim of a teacup he drew rings around our farm, one and then another, the way you'd ripple a pond with a stone. Then he laid a long arrow straight through the middle, west to east, because that was the road the ships took. Last of all he drew an arrow standing upright, its head a little diamond, its feathers at the foot, as if someone had shot it down out of the sky and it had stuck in the ground.

Your nan said he was daft. She had lambing to see to and a hole in the roof that let the snow onto the stairs. But Tomas only tapped the upright arrow and said it pointed at the gate, and the gate was where a person begins. Nobody argued with him after that, because nobody could argue with a man who had seen the other side of the water and come back to tell it.

In March the frost still silvered the gatepost when Tomas folded the map into a square, pushed it into his pocket and walked out with one good boot and one bad. We never saw him again. What we found on the table afterwards was the teacup, dry, with a ring of old tea in the bottom, and the bread knife still lying exactly where he'd left it, pointing out of the window.