Colour tattoo of snapdragon, chrysanthemum and daisy flowers with a vertical Latin script line on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flowers and Latin script on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A colour tattoo on the side of the ribs shows a pink snapdragon spray, a pale blue chrysanthemum, two white daisies with yellow centres and green leaves. A black cursive line of Latin text runs vertically between the flowers, and the linework is bold with soft shading in the petals.

Botanical Ribs Chrysanthemum Daisy Flower Leaves Script text Latin phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flour lorry has not come, and the wedding sponges for Saturday will not bake themselves. You stand in the back of Pemberton's at quarter to five with the strip lights buzzing and half a sack of strong white at your feet, reading the motto Mrs Pemberton chalked above the proving cupboard years ago, its letters gone grey with dust. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. She never translated it for you. You assumed it was about bread.

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You ring the mill outside Kettering, and a man there says the van has broken down near Thrapston and won't be with you before eight. You say nothing for a while. Then you go to the cold room and count what you have: four kilos of rye, a bag of spelt Mrs Pemberton keeps for her own loaves, a crate of eggs, and the dented stand mixer nobody has trusted since February. You take the spelt. You weigh it out on the brass scales with the bent pan, and the numbers come out right, more or less.

By six the sponges are rising in paper-lined tins, the kitchen smells of browning butter, and a list is pinned to the door on the back of an invoice. Mrs Pemberton arrives early, as she always does, and stops in the doorway with her coat still buttoned, looking at the trays. She doesn't ask where the flour came from. She reaches up and taps the chalk, leaving a pale print on the second word.

Faciam, she says, and goes to put the kettle on.