Black fine line script lettering reading valar morghulis on the inner wrist of a raised arm, against a blurred tree background.

Small script lettering on the inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raised hand and forearm show a small line of black script lettering on the inner wrist, reading valar morghulis. The letterforms are thin and even, with a simple, uniform stroke. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the blurred green foliage and tree trunk fill the background.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Script Lettering Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lintel had been split by frost, so Maud spent three mornings hauling good sandstone up the scaffold before she was allowed near the letters. Old Tamsin, who had cut every inscription at Greyholm since before the roof fell in, stood below with her hands tucked into her apron and said nothing until the first stroke was true. "Thin," she said at last. "Even. Let the stone do the shouting."

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The lord had sent the words from across the sea, copied on a scrap of vellum that smelt of tallow. Nobody at Greyholm could say them aloud without stumbling, and nobody asked what they meant, because the lord was long dead and the keep had stood empty for twenty winters except for jackdaws and wind. Maud chiselled the final letter as the bell in the ruined chapel rang out of habit, and rain began to thread through the cracks in the ceiling below.

That evening she climbed to the postern tower with a stub of charcoal and a rule. On the cold inner face of the arch, where the ivy had never managed to reach, she copied the phrase again, smaller, the letters no taller than her smallest fingernail. Tamsin would have scolded her for wasting the stone's patience. Maud did it anyway, then pressed her palm against the damp mortar beside it and held it there until the cold went out of her hand.