Close-up of a small black script lettering tattoo on the side of the ribs, partly covered by a burgundy lace bralette and an open plaid shirt.

Small script word tattoo on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up of a torso wearing an open dark blue plaid shirt, a burgundy lace bralette and a black cord choker with a small silver pendant. A small black script word sits on the side of the ribs, but it is cropped so only the first letters are visible. The tattoo is in clean black ink with smooth, even linework, and the photograph has warm, low-key lighting.

Lettering Ribs Script Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the lamp is nearly spent and the road past Tamsin Wells has no patience for talkers. You want the caravan story, so I'll tell you the caravan story. Three wagons left Corrow Flats with a woman named Ada Vane at the front, and painted on the tailboard of her wagon was one word: Carry. Not carry on. Not carry me. Only carry, the way a mother carries a lamp through a dark house.

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Ada never explained it. The youngest driver, a lad called Pell, asked her every evening while she mended harness. Ask me when the water runs out, she'd say. On the fourth day it ran out. A dust wind split the second wagon's axle and buried the canvas, and Pell wanted to walk off into the glare for help. Ada lit the lamp in the wind, sat on the tailboard beside the broken wheel, and waited.

When Pell asked what she was waiting for, she said, carry it, then. He thought she meant the cargo, or the old woman's coffin under the tarps. She meant the light. Each man took a turn with the lamp, walking the ridge so the others could find the track back to the well, and at dawn they reached it with barely a pint between them. That night Ada scratched the word into the boards with a nail, pressing hard, so it would outlast the paint.

That is why, when you go down to the coast road and see the Corrow turn, the word is worn into the wood rather than written on it. Ada used to say a road is only something you carry yourself along. Now hand me that lamp, and mind the step.