Black script tattoo reading beautiful, with a decorative flourish at the start, on the side of the ribs.

Beautiful script on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close side view of a torso shows a single black script tattoo reading beautiful, with a looping flourish at the start of the word. The linework is fine and even, with the letters sitting in a slight upward curve along the ribs. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the plain background is a soft blur of green and dark fabric.

Lettering Ribs Word Flourish Script

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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

You are nineteen the winter the Chancellor of Corvane decides the new water-gate needs a word above its arch, and he gives the job to you because yours is the only hand in the palace that does not shake. He wants one word in the old court script, with the first letter curling like smoke off a snuffed wick. "Beautiful," he says, tapping the parchment with a ring. You ask whether he means the gate or the city. He says that distinction is a matter for poets, and poets are not paid by the letter.

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You spend three nights on the vellum. The first attempt fails because the cellar damp drinks the ink, the second because you press too hard on the upstroke and the hairline snaps. On the third night your window looks down on the market, where a girl sells pears under a green awning until the lamps go out. You copy the hook at the top of the flourish from the curl of a pear stalk, and it is the first thing all week that looks right to you.

At the gate, the mason cuts the word into slate and sets it on a slight rise so the letters climb toward the keystone. The Chancellor rides beneath it with his retinue and does not look up. Nobody does. Only the carters glance at it, the way people glance at weather. You stand by the wall with ink still under your nails, waiting for someone to remark on it, and no one does.

Rain comes that evening, the first in four years. Water runs off the slate and pools in every groove, so the word stands out black against the wet stone, and the carters halt their wagons to read it aloud, slowly, one letter at a time. The flourish holds a single bead longest. You watch it trembling at the top of the curl until the market lamps come on, and then it falls.