Black and grey script tattoo reading Riddikulus with a shaded feather beneath it, on the forearm.

Riddikulus script with feather on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the word Riddikulus in a flowing cursive script with a looped capital R and a tapering tail on the final letter. Below the lettering, a feather is rendered in soft grey shading with fine barbs and a pointed quill that sweeps to the right. The image is black and grey only, shot close up on skin with even, neutral lighting.

Lettering Realism Forearm Script Feather Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had found the gap in the awning again, so Ruth shifted the trays of craft feathers six inches to the left and let the drip land on the cobbles. Nell stood at the edge of the stall with her hood up, glaring at the sky as if it owed her money.

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Thunder rolled over the market hall roof. Nell flinched and grabbed the corner of the trestle. "It's only weather, love," Ruth said. "Tell it what you're scared of, then make it silly." Nell glanced at the shoppers hurrying past with carrier bags over their heads. "Riddikulus," she said under her breath, then louder, because it sounded daft and she liked how it felt in her mouth. Ruth had learned the word from her own mother, who used it in a Hull kitchen whenever the gas meter clanked, and it had never once failed to make a child snort.

Ruth pulled a grey goose feather from the box, drew it through her fingers until the barbs lay soft, and began describing the thunder: a fat man in a bowler hat stuck in a puddle, sneezing pigeons off his shoulders. Nell laughed so hard she had to lean on the stall. When the next roll came, it sounded like someone dropping a tray of spoons. "Keep that," Ruth said, pressing the feather into her palm. "Next time the sky starts up, you've got a spell in your pocket."

Nell tucked it inside her sleeve and ran off towards the bus station, leaving wet footprints in a line. Years later the same rain came down the same cobbles, and the stall had a new awning and a new pair of hands. The feather was still there in a jar of quills, its tip bent but its shape intact, and nobody on the market had ever asked where it came from.