Black ink lettering design reading too weird to live, too rare to die, with three bats flying above the words on a white background.

Too weird to live, too rare to die lettering with bats

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows the phrase too weird to live, too rare to die in uneven, hand-drawn capitals arranged in staggered lines. Three bat silhouettes sit above the top left of the text, and a thin stroke extends down from the final letters. The artwork is rendered in solid black ink with rough, brushed edges on a plain white background.

Lettering Lettering Quote Bat Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the fire only warms those who lean in. This is the kingdom of Vellmoor, which you won't find on any map your grandmother owned, because the mapmakers were frightened of its bats. The old chancellor, Hob Tarrant, had a sour mouth and a fondness for carving. Over the gate of the saltworks he chiselled a rule in letters as tall as a man: TOO WEIRD TO LIVE, TOO RARE TO DIE. He meant it as a warning. Anyone too odd for the good folk of the town was to be taken up the bell tower and left there at dusk.

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Now, the bell tower was home to a colony of bats, grey as old wool and twice as patient. Ada Penhallow, a glassblower's daughter who counted the stars on her fingers and laughed at funerals, was the first to be taken up. She sat in the belfry with a tin of boiled sweets and waited for the worst, and the worst did not come. The bats came down instead, a whole black weather of them, and they settled on her shoulders as if she were a fencepost. She told them the chancellor's rules were very dull, and they seemed to agree.

By morning the bats had carried every ledger from the chancellor's office out over the marsh, and the pages were stuck in the reeds like washing. The chancellor came up the tower in a fury and found Ada eating sweets with a bat asleep in her hair. The words over the gate were never chiselled away, but someone climbed up with a pot of tar and painted a little tail on the last word, so that DIE looked like it might be about to fly off. If you row out past the reeds at dusk, don't reach for your lantern. Wave. Somebody up there is still keeping count of the odd ones.