Two black and white photos of script lettering tattoos, one reading Alone we are strong and the other Together we are stronger, each with a small bird, on the upper back.

Alone and together quote tattoos with birds

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The diptych shows two black script tattoos on skin, one reading Alone we are strong and the other Together we are stronger. Each phrase has a small bird silhouette near its ends, and the text follows a gentle upward or downward slant across the skin. The photographs are black and white, so the ink appears as solid black lines with soft grey shading around the skin.

Lettering Back Bird Script Quote Text Pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Snow had sealed the Gap road by four o'clock, and Nell Garside stood at the taproom hatch counting logs in the basket for the third time. Her brother Sam had gone out at dusk to clear the lower drift from the yard, and he had not come back. The lamp outside swung on its hook. Behind her, the old lintel over the fire carried the words their father had cut there the winter the mill closed: ALONE WE ARE STRONG, the letters pecked uneven, with two starlings beside them, wings half open.

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She had always thought the saying a grumble. Their father had said it when he sent Sam to the coast and kept Nell at the inn, when money ran short and no one would lend it. A man alone could hold his own. She pulled her shawl tighter and went to the door, and the cold came through the gap like a blade. Then a shape moved at the edge of the lamplight, bent double, hauling a sledge of peat.

Sam came in white to the eyebrows, laughing at her face. He dropped the peat and stamped his boots. "Road's gone past the second milestone," he said. "Drover's been sat in the stable with his mule since noon. I told him we'd keep him." She fetched a towel and said nothing about her fear, which was the family way. Later, when the taproom had emptied and the drover snored upstairs, she took the chisel from the drawer and, beneath their father's words, cut a new line into the wood, slanting down like the fence rails outside. She carved the extra letters slowly: TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER.

Sam watched from the settle, rubbing his cold hands. "Dad would have something to say about that," he said. Nell blew the dust off the wood and set the chisel back in the drawer. "He can say it to the starlings," she said, and went to put the kettle on.