Two forearms with black lettering tattoos: "Trust Your Struggle" in cursive script on the upper arm and "UNUM ARBITRIO VARIAT OMNIA" in serif capitals on the lower arm.

Script and Latin lettering on two forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are held side by side, each carrying a lettering tattoo. The upper arm reads "Trust Your Struggle" in flowing cursive script with fine, even black outlines, while the lower arm has the Latin phrase "UNUM ARBITRIO VARIAT OMNIA" in upright serif capitals with light shading. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the close framing shows greenery and a chair in the background.

Lettering Forearm Script Latin phrase Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are fourteen the summer the ferry stops coming on Tuesdays, and your grandmother presses a folded page into your hand at the slipway without looking at you. "Read it when the tide's out," she says, then climbs back up the hill with her shopping trolley bumping over the stones. The page is covered in her looping hand, the same hand that labels the jam jars, and at the bottom, underlined twice, she has written the Latin her own father carved above the byre door: Unum arbitrio variat omnia.

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You don't know Latin, so you ask Mr Keir in the shop, who reads it off the lid of a paraffin tin and laughs. One will changes all things, he says. You carry that home and turn it over like a shell. The rest of the letter is tide tables and crossed-out sums, the price of a new boat, the names of men on the council who promised to come out and look at the pier and never did.

Halfway down the second side she has written, in the same steady pen, Trust your struggle, love. It isn't the sea that will drown you. It's only you refusing to lean.

You wait for the tide. When it finally pulls back, the sand is ribbed like a washboard and the old cart track is there under the shallows, exactly where she said it would be, still firm enough to stand on. You walk out along it with the page clenched wet in your fist, and the water goes on draining away on either side of you.