Fine line black script word Real with an arrow on the upper back, sitting near the shoulder blade.

Script word "Real" with arrow on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The word Real is written in thin cursive script, with a fine-line arrow shaft running to an arrowhead on the left and a feathered fletching on the right. The skin is lightly lit against a grey polka dot top, and the composition is tight on the tattoo.

Fine line Lettering Back Arrow Script Word

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold the feather against the light before you cut it, Nell said, and turn it until the vanes sit flat. Goose wing, left wing for a right-handed bow, never the dyed turkey they sold at the Leominster market, because turkey lies to you. It looks true on the bench, then wobbles in the wind like a man walking home from the alehouse.

Keep reading

Your job that spring was to glue the fletching, wrap the silk and write the maker's mark on each shaft in her cramped copperplate. Most arrows got her initials. The batch for Squire Hallam got one word instead, which she made you write slowly, the ink curling along the cedar like a vine: Real. He had called her a cheat the year before, claiming her feathers were painted rubbish, and she had never forgiven him.

On the day of the match you stood behind the butts with flour on your apron and watched his first arrow hiss into the gold. He reached for another from the quiver, read the word on its shaft and smirked. Then the wind caught the fletching on his bow arm and he saw the grey barring catch the light, every vane ruffling the same way, and the smirk slid off his face before the shot.

He handed the arrow back without a word. Nell ran her thumb down the vanes, said nothing either, and that was how you knew she was pleased. That evening she gave you the ink pot and told you to mark every shaft in the shop, even the ones bound for children's bows, and to write the word slowly, because nobody ever bought a cheap arrow from a woman who wrote it that way.