Black script lettering tattoo on the outer thigh, set in four lines of text reading a quote about forgiveness.

Quote lettering on a thigh

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a four-line quote in black script lettering, reading "The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." The linework is crisp and even, with solid black ink and no shading or colour. It sits centred on the outer thigh against pale skin, with a dark garment at the top edge and a hand with dark nail polish resting at the right.

Lettering Thigh Quote Text Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have walked the hedge maze at Vellan for three days, and the gardeners no longer call out from the gate. The Queen of Ostrane had it planted after her brother's cruelty split the court in two, so that all its grief would have somewhere to go and never arrive. Every turn is a wall of yew clipped to the height of a man, and every wall looks like the one before it. You carried a ball of red thread in from the scullery, but the thread ran out beside the fountain, and the water there keeps rising.

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On the fourth morning you find Brannoc the mapmaker sitting cross-legged against a hedge, sketching the same corner for the thirtieth time. He has the look of a man who has been counting his own debts in the dirt. You sit down opposite him and ask how he got in. He says he came after the old gatekeeper, the woman who once carried his son out of the rain on her back. Now he is no longer sure which of them is lost.

You understand then that the paths never change. Only what you carry into them does. You think of the bailiff's hand on your sister's wrist, the tallow you stole and never paid back, the name you still spit when someone says it at supper. Each one is a wall you have been building wider. Brannoc watches you think it through and says nothing, which is the kindest thing anyone has done for you since you came in.

You take his hand and loosen the grievances one at a time, the way you would unpick a knot in wet thread. When you stand, the next turn opens onto a gravel path you have never seen, and past it the gate, its bars bright with morning. Brannoc follows you out, still drawing, and the last thing you hear is his pencil scratching the way home.