Black script reading California with small hearts on a woman's forearm, with black line-work flowers on her upper arm and elbow.

California script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman in a pink top holds her arm out, showing the word California in black cursive script with small heart shapes and swirling flourishes on the forearm. Black line-work flowers, with broad petals and leaves, continue above the elbow and onto the upper arm. The image is in black and grey with a soft focus on the arm against a red brick wall.

Lettering Botanical Forearm Upper arm Script Heart Flower Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hannah, the river has gone quiet since the rain, and Tomas says that means the gold is sitting low in the cracks of the rock, where a man with patience can get at it. I have no patience left, but I have a pencil and the last of the good paper, so you will have to take what I can spare. Do not show Mother the part about the hills. She will only fret that I have caught the fever going round the camp.

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The town is a row of canvas and timber put up in a single season, with a saloon at one end and a church at the other that is only a tent with a bell. Everyone calls the whole territory by the one name, as though it were a lady we all courted at once, and I have taken to calling it that myself. There is a seamstress from Lyon who sells lace by the yard and hums to it while she cuts. There is also a girl of fourteen who keeps the post and writes every name in her book with a little curl beneath, as if each one deserved a bow.

Last Sunday I walked up past the oaks to the ravine where the wild roses grow, the big pale ones with leaves like open hands. I thought of the roses along your garden wall, and I drew one on the back of a bill of sale so I could send it to you. I have folded it into this envelope with the postmark you will not be able to read.

When the mail goes down to the coast in March I will take my wages and book passage home. Tell the neighbours I came back with more sense than I left with, and keep the lamp lit in the front window. I will count the nights by it.