A three by three grid of nine square watercolour tiles, each with a black rune-like symbol and a printed word such as Fearless, Strength, Heal or Insight beneath it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Nine rune symbols on watercolour tiles

Colour · Flash

The image is a grid of nine square panels, each with a black symbol drawn in bold, even linework and a word in capital letters printed across its lower section. The backgrounds are soft watercolour washes in green, red, purple, orange, teal, pink and magenta, with speckled edges. The words read Fearless, Soundless, Strength, Talent, Deflect, Heal, Angelic Power, Insight and Speak in Tongues, and the symbols are arranged evenly with a white border around the whole sheet.

Rune Symbol Watercolour Fearless Strength

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tiles were kept in the bottom drawer of the hall table at Gull Row, wrapped in a tea towel that smelled of carbolic, and Mrs Threlfall only took them out on the last night of the season. She laid them face up on the oilcloth like a hand of patience and made me choose one before the kettle boiled.

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I wanted Strength, which was what everyone wanted that winter, and she tutted. "Strength is for men who've lost their boats. Pick the one you'd carry into a room with the lights off." I looked along the row: Fearless, Deflect, Heal, Insight. Fearless was red and bled at its edges like a bruise going down. Soundless was green, the wash soft as a pond, and I had my finger on it before I'd decided anything.

"Thought so," she said. Her husband Walt had painted them for a sign-writer's shop in Bridlington before the war, nine squares to hang in the hall for guests who came in off the cliffs with the wind still in their hair. He never explained the marks. He said the words were only for people who needed telling, and that the marks were for everyone else.

Next morning the gale came up Gull Row and the house went quiet the way only a house by the sea can, every door pressed shut against it. I walked out with my collar up and heard nothing but my own boots on the wet stones. I didn't mind the silence. I thought of that green square in the drawer, its black rune lying still on the wash like a gull on a sea wall, waiting out the weather.