Black and white ink drawing of a large letter S, its strokes formed from flowing flame-like lines and ocean waves with foam crests.

Wave and flame letter S design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A large capital letter S drawn in fine black linework on a white background. The upper curve is filled with flowing, flame-like strands, while the lower curve becomes a series of rolling waves with textured foam crests and parallel lines suggesting water movement.

Lettering Wave Flame Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the abbot has finally let me have the good vellum, so you will forgive the ink on my sleeve. I have spent three days on the great S that opens the Psalter for the Feast of St Brendan, and I have made a mess of its top half twice. The letter is meant to be the sea. Brother Edmund wanted waves all the way round, like a sampler of the coast at Lindisfarne, but the abbot wanted the tongues of Pentecost running up into it, so the stroke begins as fire and ends as water.

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The trouble was the join. Where the flames give out, the waves must begin, and I could not make the curl hold. Each morning I went down to the scriptorium steps to watch the tide come over the causeway, looking for how the water lifts before it breaks. On the fourth morning a fishing boat came in with its sail torn and a boy aboard who had been bailing since the night before. He stood in the doorway dripping and asked me for a candle. I gave him the stub I had been saving for the gold leaf, and while he warmed his hands I saw how the flame leans away from the wind exactly as foam leans from a wave.

So the join is done. The boy's name is Piran and he sleeps in the infirmary now with the cat on his feet. I have painted the crest of the last wave white with lead and then scraped it back with a bone knife until it looked as though it was still moving. Abbot Columba says it is the finest S in the house, though he says the same of every letter I finish, which is how I know he means it kindly.

Come at Michaelmas and see it before the binding. Bring your good spectacles, and do not let Edmund tell you the flames are too busy. They are meant to be.