Black serif lettering reading serendipity with a full stop, tattooed on the inner arm in a close photo.

Serendipity lettering on an arm

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single word, serendipity, followed by a full stop, is tattooed in a serif typeface across the skin of an arm. The lines are solid and dark, with the ink appearing as black or dark grey against a light skin tone. The word sits centrally in a tight crop, with dark fabric at the top and bottom of the frame.

Lettering Other Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferryman at Marrow Cross had a rule that nobody crossed the grey water on a day they had planned. Nell Harrat learned this the hard way the morning she missed the bell, her good shoes wet to the ankle and her sister's wedding dress folded in a sack on her back. She was meant to be at the church on the far bank by ten. It was past eleven when the old boat grated against the stones, and the ferryman, who was called Abel and had not spoken a full sentence since the flood, looked at the sack and then at her.

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He said the bridge at Lowen had fallen in the night, so the road was shut. He said the only other crossing was the reed boat at the mill, which carried eels and not brides. Nell said she would pay in silver or in promises. Abel shook his head and pushed off without a word, and somewhere in the middle of the river, where the current pulled hardest, he tipped his cap at the sky and laughed. Nell did not understand the joke until the mill-wife's boy came running down the bank with a cart, two white horses and a lost cousin who had been searching the lanes for a dress-maker.

The wedding went ahead at noon. The bride laughed at the wet hem and the sister's bad luck, and afterwards Nell stood at the rail of the church steps and watched the grey river run on. She thought about how close she had come to turning back. Years later she had the word put on her arm, small and plain, because it was the only word she could find for a thing that had happened without her planning any of it. Abel, when she told him, only nodded and said that the river kept its own calendar.