Black and grey fine line tattoo of the words You are not alone above a sketched girl holding a book, on a lower leg.

Quote and sketched girl with a book

Fine line · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo shows the handwritten script words "You are not alone." above a loose line drawing of a young girl with long hair holding a book against her side. The linework is thin and sketchy, with soft grey shading on the girl's hair, dress and book. The design sits centrally on the skin, with a plastic film visible at the left edge of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Calf Quote Script Girl Book Long hair Line drawing

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow shut the Hallow Pass at noon, and by four the only lights still burning in the hut are yours. You are sorting the lost property tin on the counter when you find it: a library book with a cracked spine, swollen from meltwater, and a name inked inside the cover in careful capitals, IDA MORAY, AGE NINE. The stamped return date is three years gone.

Keep reading

You should leave it alone. The plough is due at six, and nobody comes up here asking for old books. But you turn the pages with cold fingers, past a drawing of a girl at a bus stop with a satchel hugged against her ribs, past a pencilled note in the margin that says keep going, you're nearly there. Someone has been reading this aloud to themselves, you think, and you feel faintly embarrassed to be the one reading it now.

The radio crackles that the road is closed until morning. You make a flask of tea and the wind leans on the window like a drunk man looking for the door. Near the back, tucked inside the cover, you find a loose sheet folded into quarters, addressed to whoever finds it, in the same hand: If the road is shut, it is not the end of the road. Somebody is always out on it. You are not alone up there.

Near dawn the plough's amber light grinds up the switchbacks. You tuck the book inside your jacket, meaning to post it back to the library in town, and when you step outside the snow has stopped and the whole valley is lit blue. A line of small boot prints runs from the hut's step toward the drifts, and you follow them a little way, then stop, because they keep going on ahead of you.