Black and white photo of a fine line black script tattoo reading We're all stories in the end on a forearm, below a plaid shirt sleeve.

Handwritten quote script on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a handwritten quote in black script across three lines, reading "We're all stories in the end". The linework is thin and even, with the letters slightly slanted and connected in a loose, cursive hand. The photograph is black and white, with the ink appearing as solid black and the skin in soft grey tones against a plaid shirt cuff at the top of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Script Quote Handwriting Text

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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

Dear Imke,

Keep reading

The crate from Harrow Deep came up on the supply shuttle with its seal still intact, which hasn't happened in eleven years. Inside, under a foil blanket, was a single sheet of grey polymer printed with nothing but a line of hand-lettered text. The hand was loose and slanted, each letter leaning into the next as though the writer had never wanted to lift the pen. We're all stories in the end, it said, and nothing else.

You will want to log it as decorative. Don't. I spent the morning with the reader, and the sheet is older than the colony, which means someone carried that sentence across three generations of ships and kept it close enough to be marked on a living person. Whoever it was must have needed it more than they needed their own name.

Here is what I've decided. Scan it for the record, then put the scan in the deep store and leave the original on the shelf by the window where the light reaches it. Then take a fine pen and copy the three lines out by hand, every loop, so that your own wrist learns where the curves want to go. The machines keep the shape. Only a hand keeps the lean.

I'm enclosing my first attempt. It's crooked. Keep it anyway.

Yours, Odile