Colour tattoo of a blue and pink butterfly above script reading Life is a Beautiful Struggle, with a trail of smaller butterflies, on the upper arm or thigh.

Butterflies and Life is a Beautiful Struggle script

Lettering · Other · Colour · Photo

A large realistic butterfly with blue and pink wings sits at the top, with a trail of smaller butterflies in blue, purple and pink fading down the skin. The phrase Life is a Beautiful Struggle is written in a grey script with a flourished underline. The solid silhouette butterflies and shaded wing detail give a mix of soft colour and crisp grey lettering.

Lettering Realism Other Butterfly Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth found the chrysalis on the feed bin in January, hanging from a nail under the lip of the lid where the frost never quite reached. It was the colour of weak tea and no bigger than her thumbnail. Her father had worked the farm for forty years and never once bothered with butterflies, so she didn't know what to do with it except leave it alone and check it each morning before the milking.

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The frost came hard that week. The ewes were brought into the lambing shed, and the water troughs cracked twice. Ruth broke the ice with the handle of a fork and talked to herself the way her father used to, saying the things that needed saying to nobody in particular. On the Thursday the chrysalis split along its back, and a damp, folded thing hung there, pumping at its wings as if it was trying to remember what they were for.

She carried it in her cupped hands to the kitchen window, where the range was warm. The wings opened slowly, blue at the tips and blushing pink where the cold had got into them. It crawled onto her knuckle and stayed there. She wanted to say something hopeful to it, but the only words that came were the ones her mother had stitched on a sampler by the back door years ago, and she felt foolish saying them aloud to a moth's cousin.

When the sun came round the next morning, she opened the yard door and the butterfly lifted out over the frozen puddles and the stacked bales, weaving low until it found the hedge and was gone. Ruth stood in the cold with her hands still curled as though something were still in them. Then she went back to the ewes. It was going to be a long winter, and she would have to keep going through it.