Black script lettering in a fine-line style runs down the side of a person's ribs, reading a seven-line quote above the waistband.

Quote in script lettering along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a seven-line quote in cursive script tattooed vertically down the side of the torso, from just below the ribs to the waistband. The lettering uses clean black linework with fine strokes and some shading, and the first line is a single capital letter. The skin is warm-toned and the photo is taken at close range against a plain light background, so the text dominates the frame.

Lettering Ribs Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the cartographer of Ysmere, a kingdom of salt marsh and church bells, and by the third night of the storm you have been asked for a map small enough to fit inside a locket. The three lords across the estuary have promised the king a crown if he can find the road to their gates, and he wants every turning drawn so fine that he can carry the whole realm on his chest. You sit with the candle guttering, your ink gone thick with cold, and you shrink the country one hamlet at a time until the coast is no wider than your thumbnail.

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At midnight the king comes down to the map room with his queen's hand in his own. He is laughing at the lords' letters, saying a man could conquer the whole world with one hand if he had the nerve. The queen takes her hand back and asks him what he would do with the other. He looks at the locket in his palm, then at the two of them tangled together, and says he would need it to hold on to something. You have never seen a king so quiet.

The lords' armies arrive at dawn, and the king sends them your map as a courtesy, folded inside a gilt envelope. Three days later a rider brings back the envelope unopened, with a single line scratched across the wax: they could not find the road. You understand then that you drew only the one route, from the palace steps to the kitchen door, and that the king has never once asked you for any other.

You keep the locket. Inside, in the smallest hand you own, you have written the names of the two people at the table, and beneath them, where the sea should be, a pair of hands drawn so faintly that only the candle can see them.