Hand-drawn black ink script lettering of the word Live on white paper, with a black marker pen resting at the top of the frame.

Script lettering design reading Live

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A flowing script design of the word Live is drawn in black ink on white paper, with a looped L, a dotted i and a tapered v and e. The strokes vary in thickness and end in long, sweeping flourishes. A black marker pen and a patterned surface sit along the top edge of the frame.

Lettering Script Lettering Word Flourish Pen

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pruett has taken the back parlour for the summer, and she has asked me to write her a card for the lodgers' board, something to hang above the piano so nobody forgets why they came to Hallowcombe. I've spent three evenings with the ink pot and a sheet of good cream paper, and every attempt has come out looking like a church notice. So I'm writing to you instead, Ada, because you always told me the trick is to stop trying to be grand.

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This morning I wrote the word in plain capitals, then tried a script, a long looping L that swung down like the tail of a kite, and I dotted the i with a single fat drop of ink that spread into the fibres. The e came last, after the v had tapered off to nothing, and it curled back under itself as if it wanted to stay. I stood the card on the windowsill to dry and watched the gulls walk along the rail outside, and the word looked less like a notice and more like something that might be said to you on a walk.

Tom the coal man came up the steps while I was blotting it. He read it upside down, which is how he reads everything, and said his mother used to say the same thing to him every morning before the mill whistle, only she said it in Welsh. I asked him what it meant. He said it meant you are still here, which seemed a strange thing to tell a boy before he went down the pit, but he said that was the point.

I've pinned it above the piano. Mrs Pruett has already complained that the flourish runs over the edge, and I have told her that is the whole idea. Write back and tell me whether you think it reads as a promise or a dare.