Black ink drawing of an ornate capital letter D with acanthus leaf flourishes, shaded with fine hatching in a lettering style.

Ornate capital letter D with acanthus leaves

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

An ornate capital letter D with acanthus leaf flourishes curling from its top, right side and base. The letter has bold solid strokes, with fine hatching and stippling shading the leaves and inner edges. It is drawn in black ink and grey tones on a plain white background, with no skin or body part visible.

Lettering Initial Acanthus Leaves Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Osric had the D half finished when the ink froze in its horn. He breathed on the pot, rolled it between his palms, and tried again, muttering the Latin that the abbot forbade in the scriptorium but never heard from the cold corner where the boys sat.

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The letter was for the Psalter of Saint Edmund's, and the abbot wanted it grand. Osric had spent three days on the acanthus alone, drawing leaves that curled from the top of the bowl like a wave breaking backwards, then down the right flank, then pooling at the foot. He hatched each one with a nib cut fine as a hair and stippled the hollows until the vellum looked as though frost had breathed on it.

Brother Tobiah, nineteen and never once finished a letter without blotting it, came to look over his shoulder. "You've made the leaves heavier than the stem," he said. "The letter will sink."

Osric set the pen down, tilted the page toward the window, and watched snow settle on the cloister roof. "Then let it sink. A D that stands up straight is only a letter. This one has to hold something up." He pointed at the thin dark crescent where the bowl gave way to the stem. "Lean the leaves in, and the page will think it is being embraced."

Tobiah laughed, the bell rang for vespers, and the ink went on freezing in its horn, while Osric, who had never once been late to prayer, let it ring twice before he picked up his pen.