Two blue butterflies with grey smoky swirls and small sparkles, tattooed on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Blue butterflies with smoke swirls on upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two blue butterflies, one smaller and higher on the left and one larger in the centre, with black outlines and bands along the wings. Soft grey shading forms smoky swirls that trail behind them, and small black dots and four-point sparkles are scattered across the skin. Blue ink dominates the butterflies while black and grey are used for the wing edges, swirls and sparkles, set against pale skin with a dark background.

Back Butterfly Swirl Smoke Sparkle Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The road south of Carrow Wells ran straight for forty miles without a bend, and the dust it threw up hung behind every cart like a grey scarf. Mabel Tennant drove the salt wagon that spring because her brother had taken a fever and could not sit a mule. She carried a jar of water, a sack of bread and a letter for a man in Sesse, and she did not stop for anything that looked like shade.

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On the third day a blue butterfly came down out of the heat and settled on the reins. Then another, smaller, landed on the brim of her hat. The old carters said butterflies were the dust of people who had walked this road before and wanted company. Mabel laughed at that and kept driving. But the butterflies stayed with her, lifting ahead when the track forked and waiting at the crossings with their wings open. Whenever the wind lifted the grey dust, they drifted into it and came out sparkling, like a handful of thrown salt.

On the fourth evening the mule stopped at a dry wash where the ground had split open. Mabel could not see the far bank in the dusk. The larger butterfly rose and went over the gap, turning slowly, and the smaller one followed. Their wings caught the last light so that the ridge glowed. Mabel followed the blue, found the one firm stone, and the cart crossed.

At Sesse she gave the letter to a man who read it twice and then sat down on the step. He told her it said her brother was on his feet again and asking after the mule. Mabel turned the cart for home at first light. When she looked back, two blue wings were already waiting at the edge of the dust.