Two matching wrist tattoos in black typewriter-style lettering, reading ad astra on the left wrist and per aspera on the right.

Matching Latin wrist lettering tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two inner wrists are shown side by side, each with a line of black lettering: ad astra on the left and per aspera on the right. The letters use a serif typewriter-style typeface with soft, slightly blurred edges, and the ink appears in dark grey-black. A thin gold bracelet sits on the left wrist, and the plain background keeps the focus on the two tattoos.

Lettering Forearm Latin text Bracelet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pell was halfway across the Lock Bridge with the lantern swinging when the bell at St Ansel's began to strike midnight, and he counted the strokes the way his mother had taught him, one for each word of the old promise he carried on his left hand. Ad astra. Up at the water-gate his sister was counting too, and she carried the other half on her own hand, because the old wardens of the city had said a vow of hard passage should never be kept by one person alone.

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The river was black and fast below the arches. Each night of the winter the lamplighters crossed between the two banks, and each night the lamps on the east side went out one by one as the cold came off the water, so that someone had to go over with a flame. Pell never minded the walking. What he minded was the dark between the third and fourth arch, where the ice made noises like someone knocking under the planks.

Tonight the knocking stopped when he reached the middle. He saw his sister's lantern on the far stair, a small gold point. They lifted their hands together, as they had agreed at the start of winter, and the two words met in the air over the water, the one that reaches for the stars and the one that says the road there is rough.

Then he went down to light the last lamp, and it caught on the first try, which his mother always said meant the journey was honest.