Four close-up panels show a black ae ligature tattoo with two dots above it, fading from solid black ink to almost no visible ink on the skin.

Ae letter tattoo across four stages of fading

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

Four panels show the same tattoo of the letters ae joined as a ligature, with a dot above each side, at different stages of fading. The first panel shows solid black ink with crisp outlines, the second shows lighter speckled grey, the third shows faint grey traces, and the last shows barely any ink against the skin. The images are plain close-ups with even lighting and no colour ink.

Lettering Letter Dot

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the lamp steady, child, and mind the vellum. Brother Aldwin had the finest hand in the scriptorium and the worst temper, and he taught me that a letter is only as honest as the ink that makes it. He mixed his own from oak galls and iron filings and rainwater caught in a copper pot, and he swore it would outlast the roof.

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The winter the Danes came along the coast, the abbot sent the house's gospels south in a cart, and Aldwin stayed behind to finish one last leaf. He joined the a and the e in the margin so the bowl of the a leaned into the e like a tired man leaning on a friend. Above it he pressed two dots with the tip of a goose quill, one for each brother the flux had taken that spring.

The galls gave out in the end, as galls do. Aldwin's ae faded one winter at a time, from black to slate to grey as breath on a cold window. The abbot wanted the margin scraped for a fresh psalter. Aldwin would not have it. He sat with the leaf on his knee by the fire and said a letter is a promise the hand makes, and a promise does not need to be seen to be kept.

When he died I went to the page myself. The vellum was pale as milk and I could barely make out the join. I touched the place with two fingers, the way he did before grace, and felt nothing but cool skin. That was enough. Some things stay where they were put, whether anyone can read them or not.