Black ink stylised lettering tattoo on the inner wrist of a hand resting on an open Bible beside a pen.

Stylised letters on the inner wrist

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black ink tattoo of stylised capital letters on the inner wrist. The letterforms are bold, angular and partly rotated, with solid, even linework. The hand rests on an open Bible with a pen lying across the pages, and the warm, vintage-toned photo has a dark vignette around the edges.

Lettering Hand Letter Wrist Pen Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit closer, the rain's getting under the awning and I'll not shout over it. You want the tale of Tobiah Quill, who sold letters at the Saturday market in Ashby Cross, between the eel man and the woman with the clocks. He painted signs for a living, and he could make any word look like it was leaning into a wind. Shop names, pub boards, the odd gravestone when the mason was drunk.

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One winter a stranger came to his stall with a Bible under his arm, its pages gone soft as cloth, and asked for three capitals turned on their sides, the way a man tilts his head to hear better. He would not say what they spelled. He only said they had to be sharp enough to cut a shadow. Tobiah took the commission, charged him a shilling for the ink, and for three nights he drew nothing but rotated letters on scraps of slate, until the slate was grey with rubbing and the letters had begun to look back at him.

On the fourth morning the rain came sideways off the river and the stranger returned, sleeves pushed back, asking for the letters to be made permanent. Tobiah refused. A sign only works if someone reads it, he said, and he had no notion who would read this one. The stranger smiled, paid him anyway, and walked off into the wet, leaving the Bible open on the stall at a page with one line underscored in violet ink.

Tobiah never learnt what the letters meant. But ask the eel man and he'll tell you the stall stayed dry all that month, though the rain fell on every side of it. Go on, take your coin back. Some words are only ever read by the one who carries them.