Black and white photo of two hands pressed together, with the word PAST in serif capitals on one wrist and FUTURE on the other, a black and grey lettering tattoo on the inner wrists.

PAST and FUTURE wrist lettering

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are pressed together with their fingers interlocked against a dark background. The word PAST sits on the left wrist and FUTURE on the right, both in a plain black serif typeface with crisp, solid linework. The image is entirely greyscale, with soft lighting on the skin and the text placed centrally between the wrists.

Lettering Forearm Word Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind's got into the arrow slits again. You want to know about the two doors of Harrowgate? Those lintels are still scratched with letters nobody reads now, PAST over the west arch and FUTURE over the east. The lord who ordered them had lost a wife to a bad winter and wanted one door to lock the grief behind him and the other to open on whatever came next. So he hired Tobiah Crane, a mason with hands like knotted rope, and Tobiah's daughter Wren, who carried his chisels and never once looked down while she worked.

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Tobiah cut the words in plain serif capitals, nothing curled or fancy, because he said fancy letters lie to you about how long they last. On the final morning the lord came to pay him and found the mason sitting on the threshold of the east door, his wrists pressed together over his knees, the two words drawn in soot-black ink on the skin. "Which one are you?" the lord asked. "Neither," said Tobiah. "Wren keeps the east now. I only keep the west."

The lord walked out through the future door that same afternoon and never came back, and the castle slowly gave itself to damp and ivy. Some say Wren still climbs the east stair with a chisel in her apron. Others say she only carves the ends of sentences, leaving the middles for whoever comes after.

Drink your tea before it goes cold. Both doors still stand open, and the wind comes through the words the same as it always did.