Shaded purple and grey butterflies with a flowing ribbon tattoo on the arm.

Butterflies and ribbon on the arm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large butterfly sits at the centre with two smaller butterflies, one above and one below, linked by swirling ribbon-like lines. The wings and ribbons are rendered in soft grey shading with lavender and purple tones, giving a blended, dimensional look. The design is composed diagonally across the skin, with the ribbon tails trailing down toward the lower edge of the frame.

Forearm Butterfly Ribbon Swirl Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

They say the butterflies came up from the water meadows every August, the week the Harvest Hall lamps were lit, and nobody in Carrow Dale ever swept them out. Old Mab Tranter kept the hall key on a lavender ribbon round her neck and would not let the boys touch it. "Dance with the ribbon or don't dance at all," she told them, because the ribbon was what drew the butterflies in.

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The year Ada Lowe turned seventeen, she wore her mother's lavender sash to the Saturday reel. Halfway through the set the fiddler stopped mid-tune, because a large butterfly had settled on the silk and would not be shaken off. It lifted, circled the lamps twice, and climbed in a long slow spiral towards the rafters, trailing the sash behind it like a kite string. Ada felt the tug at her waist and laughed, and then the silk slid out of her hands and went with it through the open door.

Joss Miller, who had been trying to catch her eye all summer, ran after them with his cap in his fist. He reached the edge of the meadow just as the sash snagged on a hawthorn, and he got a handful of silk and held on. Two smaller butterflies came down out of the dark and settled on his knuckles, and he stood so still that Mab came out with a lantern to find him.

She unwound the ribbon from his hand one finger at a time. "Some things come back to the hall," she said, "and some only ever visit." In the morning the sash lay folded on the step with its ends trailing down the stone, and on the sill above the door sat two small lavender butterflies that did not fly off when the sun came up.