Fine line outline tattoo on lower abdomen

The abbot has finally let me have vellum, though only the offcuts left over from the psalter, so the coast for the new chart must be drawn in outline. He says I have no ink to spare for shading and that the sea will not mind. I have walked the shore three mornings running with a cord and a bundle of pegs, marking where the land breaks into fingers and where the tide hides the reefs. Each headland is a single angled stroke, each bay a notch, and where two reefs meet I lift the pen so the ink does not pool.

Yesterday Brother Wulf asked why I bother with such sharp corners when the fishermen only need the sounding marks. I told him a true coast is never round. It is a torn edge, all elbows and hesitations, and a chart that smooths it lies to the boat. He laughed and said I was becoming a poet. I said the sea had made me one long before the abbot ever handed me a pen.

The last sheet is pinned to the refectory wall now, weighted with four stones and a lamp. When the candles fall across it, the thin lines throw faint shadows onto the whitewash, so the coast seems to carry on past the edge of the parchment. I am sending you a tracing of the reefs alone, which I think is the truest part. Pray for fair weather, and for my hand.

Yours in the work, Brother Edric