Black fine-line script tattoo in three vertical columns on the upper back, below blonde hair, with looping characters and thin strokes.

Vertical script tattoo on upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows the upper back of a person with loose blonde hair, with three vertical columns of thin black looping characters inked on the skin. The linework is fine and even, with a small open-looking symbol in the centre column. The image is a close, mostly neutral shot with soft natural light and a shallow focus on the tattoo.

Lettering Fine line Back Script Symbol Vertical line Character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Tamsin kept the sea-charms pinned to the back wall of the kiln house, three strips of paper set in a column, each written top to bottom in the looping hand the islanders had learned from the Dutch traders. Nobody on Hest could read it any more, but everyone agreed the middle column mattered most, because of the small open circle near its foot.

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Her grandson Ruari was sent to fetch the charms the winter the boat Sheelagh did not come back. He was twelve and wanted to be the one who knew. He copied the strokes onto his slate by candlelight, loop by loop, and by the second night his hand had the shape of it better than his tongue had the words.

On the third morning the fog lifted and the Sheelagh sat off the skerry, her sail hanging like wet linen. Ruari pressed the slate to his chest and walked down to the shore, reading the columns aloud from the left, as he had seen Tamsin do. The men in the boat heard only their own names in the wrong order and pulled hard towards the sound.

Then the hull knocked against the rocks and Ruari saw that he had copied the middle column backwards, so the circle sat at the top. He turned the slate round and read it again, slowly, until he found the word that meant home.