Close-up of a black fine line script tattoo reading ad maiora with a small hand-drawn arrow above it, on the inner wrist beside a world map watch.

Ad maiora script on the inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of the Latin phrase ad maiora is written in loose, handwritten lettering across the inner wrist, with a small arrow-like stroke above the first word. The linework is thin and even, with no visible shading. The wearer also has a world map watch, metal bangles and a charm bracelet with a Union Jack charm, set against a grey textured fabric.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Script Arrow Watch World map Bracelet Latin phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Bramleys came down early that August, thumping onto the grass faster than Nell could fill the trugs. Her uncle Ray stood under the grey-green boughs with his hands in his cardigan pockets, counting the windfalls aloud as though they were debts. "Lost, every one," he said, and she did not argue, because the lorry was coming Thursday and the buyers in Hereford had already named their price.

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She had spent the week at the kitchen table with the old atlas, tracing the coast of Portugal with a bitten pencil. Her mother had gone there at nineteen with one suitcase and a promise to write, and the letters had stopped the year Nell learned to climb ladders. Ray never spoke of it. But on Tuesday he had left the atlas open to the Atlantic, and beside it a note in his square capitals: AD MAIORA. Underneath, he had drawn a small upward arrow, the same mark he made beside the best rows on the orchard map.

That evening she asked him what it meant. He unbuckled the watch with the faded map face he had bought for bus fares to market and set its hands to the time in Lisbon, which was an hour behind. "Towards greater things," he said. "Your nan painted it on the cider barrel. I never knew whether she meant the cider or the leaving."

On Thursday the lorry took the crates. Nell kept back one Bramley, wrapped it in the Hereford Times, and addressed it to a street in Lisbon she had found in the back of the atlas. It would take a week to arrive. She wrote the rest on the parcel in pencil, letter by letter, pressing hard enough to dent the card.