Black and grey realism tattoo on an arm of a butterfly above an ornate filigree heart locket, with a bead chain running down the left side.

Butterfly and filigree heart locket on arm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A butterfly with detailed wing veins hangs above a filigree heart locket, with a string of beads running down the left edge of the design. The shading is smooth and grey, giving the locket a three-dimensional, metallic look, while the butterfly wings are rendered with fine black linework and light highlights. The design is in black ink and greys only, set against softly blurred skin and background.

Realism Forearm Butterfly Heart Filigree Bead Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the heart half-pierced before the foreman came round to check the hallmarks, and she kept her hands moving while he leaned over her shoulder. Filigree was all about the gaps, he liked to say. Leave too little air and the piece looks like a bun tin; leave too much and a child could snap it with a sneeze. She had sixty-two loops to solder before dinner and a bead chain to thread through the back for Mrs Ashdown, who had brought in her late mother-in-law's locket and asked for something lighter.

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The butterfly was Nell's own idea, sketched on the back of a pay slip. She had drawn the wings from a moth pinned to the window frame of the upstairs room, its veins so fine she needed the lens from her father's watch to get them right. Mrs Ashdown wanted something that would open. Nell said the hinge would be the easy part. The hard part was making the thing look as though it had only just landed.

The night before collection she sat up with a candle and an engraving tool, meaning to cut a tiny initial inside the lid. She could not decide between the widow's letter and her own. In the end she cut nothing at all, leaving the silver bright and blank, and wrapped it in tissue with the beads coiled beside it like a rosary someone had forgotten to pray.

Mrs Ashdown opened it on the counter, found nothing inside, and laughed. 'Good,' she said. 'Then it's mine to fill.' Nell swept the filings into the crucible tray and found, when she looked again, that the pale dust had settled into the shape of a single wing.