Two matching black script tattoos reading Post tenebras lux, one on each forearm, with flowing lettering and a small swirl at the end of the phrase.

Post tenebras lux lettering on forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms show the same black script tattoo reading Post tenebras lux, written in a flowing, slightly slanted hand. The lines are solid and even, with a small curl finishing the x on the upper arm. The image is black and grey, with a plain background and the lettering placed along the length of each forearm.

Lettering Forearm Latin phrase Script text Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at Gull Skerry went dark on the third night of the gale, and Ada Penhallow was the one who had to climb up and find out why. Her brother Tom kept the lamp room key on a string round his neck, but he had gone down with fever on the Tuesday and lay in the cottage shouting about the sea. So it was her, a lantern in one hand and the rail in the other, counting the iron steps the way their father had taught them: nineteen to the landing, thirty-one to the glass.

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The mantle had cracked. Salt had got into the burner and crusted the wick, and the glass was furred so thick she could barely see the brass. She worked by feel, scraping and wiping with the oilskin rag while the wind leaned on the tower and the whole thing groaned like a ship at anchor. Her hands shook. She kept thinking of the Lily Ann out past the skerry, and how black the water would look to a man who did not know where the rocks lay.

When the flame caught it was small and yellow and ugly, then it steadied, then it was a white bar laid across the dark. Ada sat on the floor with her back against the cold iron and laughed until she was sick into the bucket. Tom had painted the words on the lintel years back in his slanting hand, and their father had called it showing off. Light after darkness. She had always thought it was about the sea.

Next morning the Lily Ann came round the point with her colours still flying, and a boy on her deck waved his cap at the tower. Ada waved back. Tom, propped at the cottage window under a blanket, saw it, pointed up at the lamp room and grinned, and she understood he had been waiting all along to see whether she would climb.