Black and grey tattoo of a shaded feather with a looping script quote reading Behind every happily ever after there's an extraordinary story, across the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Feather and script quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a shaded feather whose quill runs into two lines of cursive script, reading "Behind every happily ever after there's an extraordinary story". The feather is rendered with soft grey shading and dark tones at its tip, while the lettering uses clean black linework. The photo is taken from behind, with the subject's braided hair at the top of the frame and a fine necklace visible.

Lettering Realism Back Feather Script Quote Text Necklace

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

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I found the box under the stairs at Aunt Vi's, the one with the tin of buttons and your pressed primroses. Inside was the quill you borrowed off me in the Lent term of 1961 and swore you'd return. I have kept it all these years, which I suppose makes me the sort of fool who keeps things. The nib is split and the vane is gone at the tip, but the grey barbs still fan out the way they did when you tickled my wrist with them during Latin.

The reunion is on the fourteenth. Mrs Pargeter has put our old cloakroom on the list, so I expect the coats will still smell of wet wool. I am not going to pretend I know what to say to you after forty years of silence, except that I have been reading the bit of your last letter over and over, the line about the pantry, the one where you wrote that every happy ending needs someone to hold the lamp steady while the author does the difficult part.

I have been thinking that was unfair of you, because I never once held the lamp. I was too busy being sure of myself. So I am bringing the quill, and I am bringing the ink you liked, the blue that smudges on your thumb. If you come, sit beside the window where the radiator ticks. I will tell you the true end of the story, and you can decide whether it deserves a better one.

Yours, with ink on my fingers, Helen