Black line flash sheet of labelled rune designs, including balance, celerity, strength, hearing, keen sight, eyesight, flying rune, healing rune, fearless, alliance and portal rune.

Rune tattoo flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A flash sheet headed RUNES showing eleven black line designs, each with a handwritten italic label beneath it. The designs use bold, tapering tribal-style strokes, with some built from swirls and curves and others from eyes, ears, wings and a star shape. The sheet is printed in black ink on a plain white background, arranged in loose rows with no shading or colour.

Rune Strength Fearless Eye Ear Wing Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shift along, child, and mind the sparks. No, the little eye in the flames is not a warning, it only looks like one. Eleven marks were cut into the wet clay of Wenlow's gatehouse the spring the river rose, and my grandmother's grandmother held the chisel, because the master's hands had gone to shaking.

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Each mark had its work. The swirl that leans like a drunk man went over the scales in the grain hall, so no measure would cheat a farmer. The ear sat above the watchtower bell, and the sharp wings went over the water stair so the lamp boys could run it without falling. Strength crowned the bridge chains, celerity the post where the runners set out, and eyesight and keen sight sat either side of the gate, one to see far and one to see close.

The last two were the trouble. The star that heals she carved gently, and the men said her hand was steady as sleep. The portal rune she would not finish. The master wanted it open, a door for the salt boats to come through, but she knew a door swings both ways, so she set a half-shut eye in its middle and told them it would open only when someone looked back at it.

They say the town still trades, and the river still climbs in spring, and on dry nights the star over the gate turns slowly, as if counting who passes beneath. Sleep now. Fearlessness is only a boy who has not yet seen the river rise.