Black lettering tattoo of four vertical Chinese characters running down the centre of a person's back, shown from behind.

Vertical Chinese characters down a back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person is photographed from behind with a column of four black Chinese characters tattooed vertically down the centre of the back. The characters are solid, evenly weighted black ink with clean edges and no visible shading, and the skin is a warm tone against a plain light background. Dark curly hair falls over the upper back and shoulders, and the low-cut black top frames the lower back.

Lettering Back Chinese character Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had already shut the lower road when the mule refused the third bend, so I carried the letter myself, buttoned inside my coat where the wet could not reach it. Six characters ran down the single sheet, one above another, each stroke pressed so hard the paper had dimpled. My teacher in the river town used to say never to hurry a brush. The wind at the Saddle Gate had no such scruples.

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At the toll hut, Brother Ondrej stamped the frost off his boots and held out a hand for the post. He could not read, he admitted, but he liked to hear letters aloud, so I unfolded the sheet on the rough table and read it to him by the lamp. It was a plain enough letter. A man had gone down to the lowlands with the autumn salt caravans and promised to be home before the passes closed. The last line was written twice, the second time more slowly, as if the ink had needed to be sure.

Ondrej listened with his cap turning in his hands. When I finished he asked whether the mountain could read too, because he had heard that the snow kept some letters and dropped others. I told him the mountain read nothing, which was exactly why people down here wrote to one another at all. Outside, the shutter knocked against its hook and the snow sifted through the gap in a thin grey line.

I left before first light. From the cairn above the hut I looked back and saw the smoke going straight up, and the snow lying white across everything: the roofs, the road, the cracked bell on the gate. Only the letter in my coat was still black on white, every stroke where the brush had put it.