Black and grey script lettering reading Alis Volat Propriis across the side of the ribs, above the waistband of jeans.

Alis Volat Propriis script on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo reads Alis Volat Propriis in two lines of flowing cursive script, with the first line slightly larger and set above the second. It is rendered in black ink with smooth, consistent linework and soft shading. The photograph is black and white, with the lettering centred on the skin above the waistband of jeans.

Lettering Ribs Script Lettering Latin text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the oven, and mind the tray, because I shall only tell this once and the dough will not wait on me. Before the church bell at Harrow Lane, when the flour was still grey in the sacks, there was a girl called Nell Ashdown who would not be carried anywhere. Her father lifted her onto the counter each morning to reach the high shelf, and each morning she slid down and dragged the crate across the floor and climbed up on her own.

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The winter the river froze, the lamplighter's boy got stranded on the bridge with a broken cart and a sack of rye, and the whole street agreed somebody must go out with a lantern. Her father reached for his coat. Nell took the lantern off its hook first. She went out across the ice on her own feet, testing every step with the toe of her boot, and she came back at first light with the boy walking beside her and the rye on his shoulder. Nobody could say afterwards who had carried whom.

Over the back door hung a board her mother had painted years before, the letters curling and softened by the steam: Alis volat propriis. Nell had always thought it a strange thing to paint over a door when a person could simply walk through. But that morning, with the frost going off the glass and her hands white to the wrist, she read it properly. It did not promise that anyone would fly for her. It only said that the wings were hers, and that she had already used them.

She took the first loaf out of the oven, tapped its base to hear it sound hollow and ready, and set it on the sill to cool where the sun would reach it first.