Flash design of a black-outlined ribbon banner with green shading carrying the lettering IN THE WAVES OF CHANGE WE FIND OUR TRUE DIRECTION, shown on a speckled background.

Ribbon banner with a lettered quote

Lettering · Mixed · Flash

A line drawing of a ribbon banner that loops across the sheet, carrying the words IN THE WAVES OF CHANGE WE FIND OUR TRUE DIRECTION in ornate, decorative capitals. The ribbon is outlined in black and filled with flat sage green shading on its undersides and tails, with white panels for the text. The design is centred on a pale, speckled grey background.

Lettering Traditional Banner Ribbon Quote Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry to Brackwater had been cancelled for the third time that week, so Dora Vance sat on the quay with her tin of brass polish and a sailor's cap that didn't fit her, watching the harbour master nail a fresh notice to the post. Somebody had written the same motto on the back of it in careful copperplate, the way her grandfather used to letter the names on the lifeboats. In the waves of change. She had thought it was a fine line for a tea towel and a poor one for a boat.

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Her grandfather had been a signwriter before he was a coxswain, and he had never trusted a banner that didn't look like it was blowing. He painted the ribbons on the Saltmarsh chapel windows with green along their undersides so the folds would catch the light, and he always told her the trick was to make the words sit inside the ribbon as if the wind had carried them there and set them down. The chapel had gone to flats years ago. The windows went with it, though one panel was still wrapped in a sack in her spare room.

She took the panel out that evening, stripped the sacking and held it up to the lamp. The green had faded to the colour of old sea glass, and the lettering curled at the ends like it was reaching for something past the edge. Under the last word, very small, her grandfather had written a date and a single letter, D, which she had always assumed meant her name.

In the morning the cancellation was lifted. Dora left the cap on the hook, folded the panel into her coat, and walked down to the slipway where the tide was turning. She did not know yet where the boat would take her. She only knew which way the ribbon was pointing.