Black ink lettering in an angular, Tengwar-style script runs across the lower back above the waistband of black trousers.

Tengwar-style script across the lower back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a single line of black script tattooed across the lower back, just above the waistband of dark trousers. The letterforms appear to be Tengwar-style Elvish script, drawn in a clean, even black line with solid fills and no visible shading. The skin is lit with a warm, slightly vintage tone against a dark background, and the line of text runs diagonally from left to right across the frame.

Lettering Back Script Word Text

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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

The ink has gone thick again, so forgive the blots. Father would scold me for using the cheap oak gall, but there is no call for the good stuff in a valley where the only letters that travel are the ones the tax men send. I have written this in the old hand instead, the one with the hooked stems and little looped bowls that Mother drilled into us over the kitchen table, so the clerk at the crossing cannot read a word of it.

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The boatman who carries this downriver says the flood took the lower mill and two of the Pell brothers' sheep. He says the bridge at Harrowgate is still standing, though the keeper there now charges by the cart. I have not left the house since the water went down. I sit by the window with the shutters open and copy the same line again and again, because my hand needs something to do that is not waiting.

You will look at the first line and think I have lost my wits. It says that the river keeps what it is given and gives back what it is owed, and that you are not to come home for the hat. The hat is a joke between us, and you will remember the rest once you have sounded it out. I would not trust anyone else with such nonsense, but then I would not trust anyone else with the mill either.

The pot is dry now. I have been scraping the last of it onto the sill with my thumb, and the words come out grey and faint, but they come. If the water rises again, go up the hill road and do not stop for the cart. Leave the door on the latch. I will be the one at the window, writing your name in a script that nobody else will ever be able to read.