Pencil drawing of a tattoo lettering design with ribbon banners, French script, a heart, a pocket watch and a script word, shown without any body placement.

Pencil lettering banner with French script

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of a lettering design with layered ribbon banners carrying French text in block capitals and a flowing script word. Shading uses fine hatched lines and soft grey tones to give the letters a three-dimensional look. Small motifs include a heart, a round pocket watch or similar object, a plus sign and curling flourishes, arranged in a symmetrical composition on a plain white background.

Lettering Banner Ribbon Lettering Script Heart Pocket watch Flourish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The card had been wedged behind the cough lozenges for so long that its corners had gone soft, and Odile only pulled it out because the bank man had come into the pharmacy twice that week asking for her by name. Guide de santé financière, it said across the top, in capitals her late husband had pressed with a rubber stamp. Pour vivre riche et longtemps. He had always laughed at it.

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Marcel from the Crédit du Lac had brought a folder thick with figures and a pen he kept clicking. He wanted her to sell the shop and the flat above it and move to the coast, where the sea air, he said, did wonders for the old. Odile listened with the brass scales ticking on the counter. When he finished she slid the card across to him, face up, and tapped the little pocket watch drawn in the corner.

Read it, she said. He read it aloud, stumbling over the curl of the last word. Spend the hours slowly, keep the heart warm, and never let the money run faster than you do. He looked up, puzzled, and she told him the card had been written by a man who had counted every franc of his life and had died with a full till and an empty chair beside it.

Marcel left without the folder. Odile wound the watch on the shelf, put the card back behind the lozenges where it belonged, and switched the green cross in the window on, so anyone climbing the hill in the rain would know the door was open.