Black script lettering quote across the lower leg above the ankle, with blue and orange swirling star shapes in colour.

Script quote with swirling stars on lower leg

Lettering · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A black script quote runs in several lines across the lower leg, close to the ankle. Swirling blue, yellow and orange shapes sit around the lettering, giving a starry-sky effect. The black lettering is crisp and even, while the colour is softer and shaded, and the lines are spaced to fill the width of the leg.

Lettering Calf Script Quote Swirl Star Night sky Spiral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The big top has gone the colour of weak tea along its seams, and Harrow's Travelling Marvels has fuel for three more towns. You spend the last warm night on the roof of the ring wagon with a tin of ultramarine and a brush worn down to four stubborn hairs, painting the stars back into the canvas that the rain has been eating since Easter. Below you, Tobias Quill is counting out the wages in coins he has already promised to nobody.

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He climbs up the ladder with a flask and sits beside you on the tarpaulin, breathing like a bellows. He tells you that the clowns have gone to the coast, that the lion is dead and the acrobats are selling their boots. Then he squints up at your swirls of orange and blue and says the only true thing he knows is that people will walk past a closed gate, but they will always stop under a sky that looks like it is turning. You tell him you know nothing for certain, not even whether the Brighton man will pay for the poster. He laughs until he coughs, and says that is the most honest thing anyone has said to him all season.

The next morning the town turns out in its Sunday coats. Children tip their heads back under the painted vault while the ringmaster announces the last act in a voice that does not carry. You are already in the wagon, folding the old canvas into a square the size of a pillow. When the wheels finally roll, you keep one scrap, a corner of star with a bright curl of gold, and nail it above your narrow bed where the lamp can catch it. At night it looks almost like the real thing, and you lie beneath it until the road hums you to sleep.