Two wrists with black serif lettering tattoos, one reading LUMOS and the other NOX, set against a blurred dark green background.

LUMOS and NOX wrist lettering

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are held up with the wrists side by side, each carrying a single word in black serif capitals. The left wrist reads LUMOS and the right reads NOX, with the letters showing crisp solid black outlines and little shading. The shallow focus and dark green foliage behind the arms keep the focus on the two words.

Lettering Forearm Word Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at Skerrow had to be lit before the last of the light slid off the water, and by November Nell Pike was the only one of the two sisters who could manage it in under four minutes. Rhona said that was because Nell had longer fingers and no patience, which was true, though patience had never been the point. The point was the paraffin, the wick, and the glass chimney that had to be wiped with a clean cloth or the beam came out smeared.

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They had inked the words the summer their father drowned, at the kitchen table, with a sewing needle and a bottle of Indian ink from the chandler in Thurso. LUMOS went on Nell's left wrist, because she was the one who climbed the tower first. NOX went on Rhona's right, because she was the one who could sit in the dark without flinching. Their mother called it daft, then held Nell's arm steady while the needle went in.

The gale came in on a Tuesday, the sea gone the colour of slate. The relief boat could not land. At dusk Rhona climbed the stairs with the oil can and found the wick black and split, the mantle cracked, and the spare glass lost to the spray that had come through the gallery. She stood under the dead lamp with a hand torch in her fist and read NOX in the thin yellow light, and understood for the first time what the second word was for. She did not try to light the lamp. She sat beside it, as she had been taught, and kept the watch until the sea went down.

At dawn Nell came up on the first boat, soaked to the collarbone, and found her sister asleep against the iron rail with one hand open on the cold floor. Nell knelt, found the matches, and held her own wrist beside Rhona's until the two words lay side by side in the grey light, one for lighting and one for resting, and neither was any use without the other.