Black and grey fine line script reading ad maiora on the inner wrist, with the hand raised above it.

Ad maiora script on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black script phrase, ad maiora, sits on the inner wrist beneath a raised hand. The thin, even linework is crisp and the lettering uses a slanted cursive style. The monochrome photograph has a plain white background, which keeps the focus on the wrist and the tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Phrase Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gardener's daughter had planted the pear tree the year the wall fell, and by the time its branches reached over the lane, nobody in Hollin Cross could remember it being small. Her father said a pear tree was a promise made to people not yet born, and he said it while mending the gate with binding wire, so nobody took him seriously.

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Every spring she climbed it to see how far the blossom had gone. Her brother wanted the high branch for a bird box. She told him no, the branch was for looking, and he sulked until the wind took his hat over the wall and into the neighbour's marrows. He went after it and came back with a cabbage under one arm and a story about a goat.

When the old woman who kept the orchard across the valley died, she left the girl a trowel and a folded paper. On it, in a slanted hand, were two words: ad maiora. The girl asked the priest what they meant. He said onward, or toward greater things, and she said that seemed a lot to ask of a pear.

She took the trowel up the hill that autumn and dug one more row. The tree bore hard green fruit the following year, and she carried a basket of it down the lane. The pears kept through the winter, and the wall stayed where she had rebuilt it.