Black and grey lettering tattoo reading Not all those who wander are lost, with swirl flourishes on the outer side of a foot near the ankle.

Quote lettering with swirls on a foot

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey photograph of a foot showing a tattoo of the phrase "Not all those who wander are lost" in a serif script that wraps along the outer side of the foot. Thin curled swirls lead into and out of the words, and the ink has a crisp, even black line against pale skin. The background is a soft grey textured surface, and the greyscale composition keeps the focus on the lettering.

Lettering Ankle Quote Script Text Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, The surveyors have finally gone back to Carlisle, and the castle is mine for the week. Mrs Pryce at the inn says the gatehouse lintel still carries the words a warden cut there three hundred years ago, though the rain has worn the swirls almost to nothing. I climbed up this morning with a rubbing kit and a bad knee and copied them out letter by letter: Not all those who wander are lost.

Keep reading

You will say I have been reading too much again. The trouble is the map. The Crown wants the old postern road marked as dead, and I have drawn it three times with the same wobble where the ground gives way near the ditch. Every time I rule a neat line round it, the ink wanders off the paper of its own accord, the way your boat did when you were nine and insisted the tide was to blame.

Yesterday I followed the wobble on foot, half a mile through bracken to a spring nobody has marked since the monks. There was a stone trough and a path worn into the grass by sheep and by someone, long ago, who cared enough to keep it clear. I was not lost. I was only somewhere the map had not yet caught up with.

So I am redrawing it with the spring in, and a small note in the margin where the warden's words would fit, for whoever inherits this job after me. Come home at Michaelmas if the sea lets you. The kettle is on the hook, and I have left the gate unlatched.