Black fine line script tattoo reading Ad Astra on the inner wrist and forearm.

Ad Astra script on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black script tattoo reading Ad Astra, written diagonally across the inner wrist and forearm. The linework is thin and even, with the letters in a flowing handwritten style and no shading. The skin is light and the background is softly out of focus, with a blue object at top left and a pale surface at right.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Lettering Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sign-writer's pot of enamel tips over on the first night at Pelham Common, and by the time you've mopped it up the black has crept into the grain of the caravan step. Your uncle Ray says it will wash out by Sunday. It doesn't. You sit on that step with a brush and a jam jar of thinner, copying the same two words onto the back of a cardboard ticket until your hand knows the shape before your head does.

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The fair is called Ad Astra Travelling Showground, though nobody has called it that since the old owner died. The big wheel rattles, the dodgems smell of hot rubber, and the man who runs the telescope stall at the end of the row tells everyone the rings of Saturn are a rumour. He sells you a lens for two pounds, and on the last evening he holds it to your eye and says the stars are only there because someone agreed to name them. You want to argue, but the generator cuts out and the whole field goes dark at once.

In the dark you see more stars than the flat in town ever allowed. You take the brush from your pocket and, by the glow of the tea van, paint the words along the bottom of the caravan door, slanting them the way the old sign ran so they seem to climb toward the wheel. It takes four tries before the loops look right. Uncle Ray finds you there at dawn, grumbling about the wasted enamel, and says nothing when he sees what you've written.