Reference sheet of black ink rune symbols arranged in rows, each with a printed English label such as abundance, agility, clarity and good luck.

Labelled rune symbol reference sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A grid of black, calligraphic rune-like symbols on a white background, each with a printed capitalised label beneath it. The symbols use bold brush-like strokes, with some shapes solid and others outlined, and the layout is orderly across six rows. The sheet has no skin, shading or colour ink and reads as a design reference rather than a tattoo photograph.

Rune Symbol

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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 Ruth, The sheet turned up in a tin box in the lost property room at Carrowmere Junction, pinned beneath a timetable from 1931. Someone had drawn forty-odd signs in black brush ink and written a word under each in careful capitals, the way you'd label seed packets. ABUNDANCE. HEAT. GOOD LUCK, which had been crossed out and rewritten as GUIDANCE, then both struck through for FORTUNE. Mr Pargeter at the ticket hatch says they belonged to Edwin Hale, who ran the night signal box for thirty years and never once lost a train.

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On Tuesday I walked home past the level crossing and tried to decide which one a man like Hale would have needed. Not FORTUNE, I thought. He'd have distrusted luck the way he distrusted cold tea. COURAGE IN COMBAT made me laugh out loud, because the only thing that ever came through Carrowmere in the dark was the milk lorry and the odd heron.

The box itself was locked, but the caretaker let me in with a ring of keys as heavy as a sack of coal. Inside, the levers were painted red and the logbook lay open at a page dated the fourteenth of February, 1947. Hale had written one line in ink that had gone brown at the edges: Held the 2.14 on AWARENESS alone. Frost on every rail. Nobody else awake.

I copied nothing out. I folded the sheet back into its tin and left it on the shelf above the kettle, with ACCURACY on top where the light from the platform catches it. The 9.40 pulled in on time this morning, and I stood at the window and counted the carriages, which is the only ritual I have ever needed. Love, Margaret