Three lines of fine black script lettering reading aut viam inveniam aut faciam, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Latin script lettering on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three lines of black handwritten-style script read aut viam inveniam aut faciam on a plain white background. The lower left panel shows the same design on small white transfer sheets resting on artificial grass, and the lower right panel shows it on a person's upper back beside the shoulder blade, with the face not visible. The image is a composite of black ink on pale skin and white backgrounds, with the lettering as the clear focal point.

Lettering Back Script Lettering Latin phrase Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sea wall at Carrick Brye had been forty yards short for as long as anyone's grandmother could remember, and every winter the boats came through the gap with their bellies scraping the shingle. The harbourmaster said it could not be built. The council said it would cost more than the town. Nell Ferrier, who mended nets on the quay and had hands like rope, said nothing until the spring tide, when she walked out over the rocks at dusk with a bucket of lime and a chisel wrapped in oilcloth.

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Her father had cut the stone for the old quay, and he kept a line chalked above the door of the net loft, a Latin saying the schoolmaster had read out to him once and that he never quite forgave. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Find a way, or make one. Nell had never liked the sound of it. It sounded like a man who had not been listening to the weather.

She worked through the lowest tides of the year. The fishermen came down to watch, then to lend a hand, first with a barrow and then with a rope. When the sea came in hard in February and took half of what she had laid, she sat on the wet stone, ate her bread, and looked at the broken courses for a long time. Then she picked up the chisel again.

In April the wall met the rock at the far point, and the last stone went in on a grey morning with the gulls gone quiet. The first boat through was her father's old punt, rowed by a boy who had never been past the mouth of the harbour. Nell watched it cross the flat water. Behind her the chalk over the net loft door had been rubbed away by the weather, so somebody climbed up with a fresh stick and wrote it out again.