Two wrists in a sepia photo, each with black script lettering reading Love all and Trust few, placed on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Love all and trust few script on wrists

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two inner wrists are shown side by side, each carrying a line of black script lettering: Love all on the left and Trust few on the right. The letters use smooth, fairly thin strokes with looped capitals and small decorative flourishes. The photograph is sepia toned, so the ink appears as black and grey against pale skin, with a dark background at the edges of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Love Script Word Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The toll-keeper at Harrowmere Bridge had two sons, and he taught them the rule his own father had taught him. Love every traveller who comes to the water, he said, but trust only the few you have counted twice. Ansel, the elder, took the first half to heart and never the second. Wenna, the younger, did the reverse, and the two of them argued over it from the time they could lift the lantern.

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One November a hooded rider reached the far bank after dark with a mule that would not cross. Ansel went down with bread and a lamp and said the river was no place for beasts in flood. The rider thanked him, paid with a silver button, and asked his name. Wenna watched from the gatehouse window and chalked the mule's brand on the beam, because she trusted nothing she had not seen twice.

Three nights later the rider came back, and then he came back again, and on the third night Wenna saw that the mule carried no load, only a sack that clinked when it walked. She ran for the chain. Ansel stood on the planks between them with his arms wide, saying the man was cold and tired and wished them no harm. The river was loud. The chain rattled. For a moment nobody moved.

In the end it was Ansel who lowered the bar. He had turned the silver button over in his palm and seen the lowland gang's stamp on it, the same stamp that had come on the notice nailed to the church door the spring before. He had loved the man enough to want him warm, and he had trusted him not at all. The brothers sat together on the gatehouse step until dawn, and their father, who had heard the whole business from his bed, said only that the rule was correct and that each of them had kept half of it.