Small black block capital lettering reading BE BRAVE, set diagonally on the inner forearm in a lettering style.

Be Brave lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a pale forearm with the words BE BRAVE in small, black, evenly spaced capital letters set on a diagonal. The linework is crisp and solid with no visible shading, and the tattoo sits near the centre of the forearm. The image is in full colour, with bright daylight casting shadows across the skin and pavement, and a pair of sandalled feet and jeans visible at the bottom of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry board at Sule Haven had split down the middle in the February gales, so Ada Pirie spent the first clear morning of spring on a stepladder, chalking out a replacement. Her nephew Cal held the tin of black enamel and grumbled about the wind coming off the Sound, saying nobody read a board in weather like this, and that people only looked at the ferry times when it was pouring sideways and they were already soaked.

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She didn't answer. She was working out the slope. Ada never painted a straight line if she could help it. She settled on a drop of about a hand's width across the length of the board, so the words seemed to lean into the crossing the way a dinghy leans into the tide. She fixed the stencil with masking tape, measured each gap with her thumb, and when Cal asked why the words weren't on the top line with the timetable, she said the timetable was for people who had already decided to go.

At noon Iain Gow came up the slipway with the first bags of post over his shoulder and stopped in front of the chalk. He read it twice, his lips moving, then asked who had told her to write that. Ada said nobody had, it was simply what the island needed on a Tuesday. Iain gave the short laugh of a man who had heard the same thing from his mother and never once believed it, and he went down to start the engine.

By the time the enamel dried that afternoon, the ferry was halfway across the Sound with one girl at the rail, a rucksack at her feet and her hair blowing sideways. Ada watched from the slipway until the boat was only a dot, then pressed the lid back onto the tin. Cal asked whether it was going to rain. Probably, she said. Let them read it anyway.