Black and grey photograph of the script lettering "The Game is On" tattooed along a forearm, with the last word cut off at the right edge.

"The Game is On" lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a line of script lettering reading "The Game is On" on the inside of a forearm, with the final word cropped by the right edge of the frame. The letters have fine, even black linework with a calligraphic, slightly slanted script style. The skin is pale and speckled, set against a dark background in a black and white image.

Lettering Forearm Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sealed letter is pushed into your hand at the gate of Ostrey just as the bells begin for matins, and the wax is still soft under your thumb. The courier has already turned his horse toward the coast without waiting for an answer, which tells you more than the seal does. You break it open in the stable, where the lamp smells of tallow and wet straw.

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There are only three lines, written in a hand that slopes forward as if it is running from something. The game is on. Your father's debts are called at the new moon. Bring the ledger, not the men. There is no signature, only a small mitre pressed into the wax. You know the hand. You taught it its loops when you were both eleven and the cook's daughter was still teaching you both to lie. The nib has snagged on the final word and left a blot like a door pulled shut too quickly.

You sit with it until the stable boy wakes and starts forking hay. Then you fold the letter into your boot and go to the chapel, where the ledger lies under a loose flagstone beneath the font. Nobody else in Ostrey ever thought to look there, and you wonder now how many years your old friend has spent imagining you would come looking.

At the new moon you ride to the crossroads with the ledger buttoned inside your coat. A lantern burns on the milestone, and beside it a single white pawn stands on a flat stone, facing the road you came by. Someone has already moved it to your side of the board.