Black and grey photograph of the words AWAKE AND UNAFRAID in block serif lettering across the inner wrist and forearm.

Awake and unafraid lettering on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a close view of an inner wrist and forearm with the words AWAKE AND UNAFRAID set on two lines in bold, upright serif capitals. The letters have solid black outlines with some soft shading and slight variation in weight. The image is entirely black and grey, with a plain, pale background and the text centred across the skin.

Lettering Forearm Word Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Each winter the wood came down to the edge of Hollin Cross and stood there, patient as a dog, and each winter someone in the village went out past the last fence and did not come back. Old Mother Sallow kept a lamp lit in the window of the mill for that reason, though nobody could say whether the light kept anything out or only told the wood where the sleepers were.

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Her grandson Tam was nine and had no patience for lamps. The autumn his father went missing he took the lantern from its hook, tied a heel of bread and a knife in a cloth, and walked the path to the trees. He did not call anything. He sat on a stump with the lantern between his boots and sang the tuneless song his father had sung on the cart, until the cold got into his hands and frost came up white on the bark.

Something answered from among the trunks, low and reasonable, asking him to lie down and rest a while. Tam said nothing. He pinched the back of his hand hard, then the other, then bit his lip until it tasted of iron, and kept his eyes on the flame. Every time his head dipped he said the words aloud: awake, and unafraid. By dawn his voice was a croak, but his father came walking out of the grey with a split lip and an empty sack, blinking like a man newly born.

The boy carried those words with him all his life, though he never could explain why a thing so plain should hold. The mill lamp burns still. Nobody sleeps past the first bell at Hollin Cross now.