Black script lettering reading 'What if I fall? But my darling, What if you fly?' on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Script quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A three-line quote in black script lettering sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The lines are thin and even, with simple shading and no colour. The photo is taken from behind, with the wearer in a teal tank top against a beige curtain.

Lettering Back Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pell had been on the ridge since before the bell, and by the time the sun cleared the birches his mother had run out of reasons to keep him at the bottom of the hill. She stood at the edge of the bracken with flour on her hands and watched him tie the goat-hide wings to his arms with strips of his sister's ribbon.

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"What if I fall?" he said, mostly to the wind.

The village below was a scatter of smoke and slate roofs, the church tower a grey finger pointing at nothing. Everyone there knew the old story of the miller's boy who went up the ridge and was never seen again, and everyone knew the wood beyond the ridge kept its own counsel. His mother set the bread down on the stone wall. She did not tell him he would be fine. She had never been a liar, and she had raised him to know the difference between hope and a promise.

"But my darling," she said, and her voice carried up the slope the way it always had, "what if you fly?"

He jumped before he could think of another question. The wings caught the updraught off the gorge and held. Below, she shaded her eyes and watched him climb over the pines, smaller and smaller, until the birches swallowed the last flash of his arms. She went back to the oven. The bread was a little burnt when she took it out, and she ate the heel of it standing up, waiting for the sound of a boy coming home.