Colour tattoo of a pink filigree heart with a grey ribbon and a purple and yellow butterfly on the top of a foot.

Butterfly and filigree heart on foot

Other · Mixed · Photo

A pink heart with ornate scroll and filigree detailing sits at the centre of the design, with a grey shaded ribbon curling down from it and another ribbon curling up beside it. A purple, yellow and pink butterfly with dark banded wings sits to the right, and the tattoo is photographed straight on against a dark background. Soft grey shading gives the ribbons and heart depth, while the colour is bold and saturated.

Other Heart Butterfly Ribbon Filigree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Tobias Wren kept the signal lamp at Hollin Cross, and every night at ten he tied a length of red ribbon to the lever so the late goods would know the line was clear. The ribbon had come from his wife's hair on the morning she took the Tuesday train to the coast. She wore a silver heart on a chain, pierced all over with scrollwork, and she pressed the ribbon into his palm and said, keep it tied till I come home, Toby. He had kept it tied for nineteen winters.

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The ribbon faded from red to the grey of wet slate, and the lever rusted stiff. Each spring a butterfly came to the platform, violet and gold with dark banded wings, and settled on the lamp glass as though it held a ticket. The porter, a lad named Eli Marsh, said it was only a painted lady blown in off the embankment. Tobias said nothing, but he set out a saucer of sugar water every morning and left the gate on the latch.

In the November of the twentieth winter, snow shut the cutting and the night mail stopped a mile short, its carriage lamps dim in the white. Tobias walked out with the hand lamp, the ribbon knotted round his wrist. Half buried beside the sleepers lay a small silver heart with its lid sprung open. Inside, folded to the size of a fingernail, was a return ticket for the Tuesday train, dated nineteen years gone, and a single curl of red ribbon.

He did not read it twice. He tied the end of the ribbon to the lever and let the lamp swing. The train crept on through the drifts and the driver raised a hand. Above the platform the butterfly lifted from the glass and went down the line into the dark, its wings flashing violet, and Tobias let it go, because the line was clear now and he had nothing left to keep tied.