Quote and two birds on upper back
Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo
A close view of the upper back and neck of a woman with dark hair, with a purple flower head held near her shoulder. The tattoo is a line of serif lettering reading Not all those who wander are lost, set in three stacked lines, with a small bird silhouette on either side. The ink is solid black with a soft, slightly grey look on the skin, and the background is softly blurred.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Brother Anselm had been copying the same coastline for eleven years, and the swallows that nested under the cloister eaves had watched him do it. Every spring they came back from wherever swallows go, and every autumn he failed to finish the coast of the lower Severn in ink that did not bleed.
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The abbot had found the quotation in a binding the monks bought from a travelling pedlar, a flyleaf scrawled in a hand nobody could place. Anselm copied it into the border of the map in small serif letters, because the words seemed to belong to a man who had walked far and come home. He set them three lines high, the way the old psalters were laid out, and placed a bird on either side, two swallows in flight, as if they had flown off the page.
Prior Edric came to inspect the work on the feast of the Annunciation. He read the line twice, then tapped the margin where the ink had dried grey. "Those who wander," he said. "You have made a rule for the rest of us, brother, and you have not kept it yourself."
Anselm laughed, and the swallows scattered from the eaves. When they settled again he saw the map was finished. He had not been lost at all. He had simply been waiting for the birds to show him the road back to the sea.
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