Black line flash sheet of three small dragon designs on aged paper, with the words I am fire and I am death between them.

Three dragon designs with I am fire and I am death

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

Three small dragon designs stacked vertically on a pale, aged paper background. The top and middle dragons have outstretched wings and curled tails, while the bottom one is a head in profile with spiked crest and open jaws. The linework is fine and sketchy, shown in black on off-white, with the phrases I am fire and I am death set in handwritten capitals between the drawings.

Fine line Dragon Wing Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The abbot wanted the margins of the Ravensworth psalter finished before the Lenten frost, and Brother Anselm gave me the dragons because I was the only novice who could draw a wing without it looking like a coat hung out to dry. I sat at the end of the north bench with the shutter open a crack, so the cold kept my hand steady and the ink did not bloom on the vellum.

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The first dragon went at the top of the leaf, climbing out of the initial P with its tail looped twice round the stem of a vine. I gave the second a lower flight, wings stretched wide over the verse, and when the ink had dried I took up the pen for the words. Anselm had written the phrases on a scrap for me in the square capitals we used for rubrics. I am fire, it read, and beneath the second beast, I am death. He tapped the scrap and said the abbot would want the letters crisp enough to read from the lectern.

The third dragon was the hard one. I had drawn only its head, jaws snapped open at the foot of the page, wide enough to swallow the gutter, and when I came to write the last line my pen would not settle. The letters came out thin and shaky, as if the hand making them had been holding its breath. Anselm leaned over, read the line twice, and rubbed his thumb along the words until they smudged grey at the edges.

When the abbot came with his lamp he held the leaf up to the light for a long time. Then he asked who had drawn the beasts so that they seemed to be watching the reader. I told him it was the dragon, and that I had only held the pen. He grunted, closed the psalter and set it back on the lectern where the frost could not reach it. Nobody ever asked me to change the words.