Close-up of a fine line butterfly tattoo with swirling tendrils on the inside of an ear, with a small stud earring below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly and swirls on the ear

Fine line · Other · Mixed · Photo

A small butterfly with outlined wings sits on the inner ear and trails into thin black swirling linework that follows the curve of the cartilage. The wings are partly filled with dark ink and show some reddish tones, while the lines are crisp and delicate. The tight close-up crops to the ear, with a stud earring and loose hair at the edges of the frame.

Fine line Other Butterfly Swirl Ear Earring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Nan Gill said the butterfly came down Scarth shaft every morning before the cage, and that it was the only thing in the pit with better ears than the men. Tom Ridley, sixteen and certain of himself, laughed and said a butterfly had no business underground. She only shrugged and folded his bread into the tin.

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The butterfly did come, a small dusty thing with wings outlined like leaded glass, red at the tips where the coal had not yet reached them. It rode the cold draught along the face and settled on the stone above the seam, and when the roof began its slow complaint it lifted and turned in tight curls, first one way, then the other. The older hands watched it the way they watched the canary, and nobody argued with a turning wing.

One Tuesday in the wet November, Tom was alone at the far heading, cutting out a bad section, when the wing stopped turning and lay flat against the wall. He heard nothing at first. Then he laid his palm on the rib of stone and felt a tremor like a cart crossing a bridge a long way off. He dropped his pick and ran, shouting for the others, and the butterfly went before him up the gallery, doubling back each time he fell behind.

The roof came down at the far end twenty minutes after the last man cleared it. Nan Gill kept the bread tin on the shelf, and its lid still bore a faint wing-dust print that no cloth would lift. Tom never again called the butterfly foolish, and when the new lads asked him what it sounded like, he only tapped the table twice and waited.