Black fine line cursive script reading one of two on the inner wrist, with the palm of the hand raised above it against a brown towel.

One of two script on an inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows the inner wrist and the base of the palm, with a short phrase in cursive script tattooed across the wrist. The letters are drawn in thin, even black linework with some variation in stroke weight. The ink is solid black on a light skin tone, and the brown towel behind the arm gives a plain, dark background.

Fine line Forearm Phrase Word Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The steward's ledger said the castle would go to whichever of us could carry the tally stick up the north stair without stopping. Mam had snapped the stick in half the morning she died, one notch for every year of our lives, and given the halves to Ruth and me as if they were a sweet to share. Ruth took hers and went up first, two steps at a time, before the bell from the harbour had finished ringing.

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The north stair had nine landings and a missing fourth, where the wall had gone into the sea in the winter of the great storm. I waited on the third with my half pressed against my palm, watching the gulls wheel over the ruined chapel. Ruth's voice came down the well of the stair, thin and certain, reading out the names cut into the lintels as though she had carved them herself.

When I reached the top, the wind was tugging at a roof that was no longer there, and Ruth sat on the parapet with her legs over the drop, picking lichen from a stone. Cut into the coping and filled with old chalk were the words she had found in the ledger: one of two. She said the steward must have meant that the castle could only ever have one lord, so we had better decide. I set my half of the stick down beside the stone, and we fitted the broken ends together until the notches met.

We went down together that evening, and the next morning the steward found us both at the gate, neither of us willing to say who had climbed first. Some days I think the words were carved for the missing arch, the stone still lying in the sea, waiting for someone brave enough to bring it back up.