Black lettering tattoo reading part of a Latin phrase ending in audere semper, in a plain lettering style on the outer thigh of a leg.

Latin lettering along the thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of two bare legs, with black block lettering running vertically along the outer thigh of the left leg. The text is partly cut off by the frame but the visible words read ENTO AUDERE SEMPER, and the ink is crisp with solid, even lines. The image is in colour, with a pale wooden backdrop, white lace shorts and a wrist with a silver chain bracelet and a wristwatch.

Lettering Thigh Latin text Lettering Word Watch Bracelet Leg Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door has stuck again, and you put your shoulder to it the way Mrs Oyelaran showed you, the way nobody warned you would hurt. It is ten past four in Halloran's on Mill Lane. Flour hangs in the lamplight above the bench, and above the proving shelves someone has painted a motto in black letters that runs down the wall until the sacks of strong white bury the end of it. You have never read the whole thing. You have only ever seen ENTO AUDERE SEMPER, and you have decided it means whatever you need it to mean this morning.

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This morning you need it to mean the rye. Mrs Oyelaran has said the sourdough is too dense for the Saturday market and that you will not be allowed to change the hydration until you can explain why. You have spent three nights with the notebook under your pillow. You have an idea about leaving the shaped loaves in the walk-in an extra hour, and you have not told her, because she will say no and then she will say nothing, which is worse.

At half four you slide the tray in anyway. The timer clicks. You stand with your back against the cold tiles and count the seconds the way she counts starters, under your breath, while the window over the sink turns from black to the colour of dishwater. When she comes down the stairs in her slippers she stops in the doorway and looks at the loaf cooling on the rack, its split top open like a mouth.

She picks it up, knocks the base with one knuckle, and says nothing for so long you start to apologise. Then she tears off the heel, chews, and nods once at the wall, at the sacks, at the words you have never read in full. "Go on, then," she says. "Make the Saturday batch the same way."