Purple and black butterfly tattoo on the lower back, with wings formed from two footprints and fine black antennae.

Butterfly formed from footprints on lower back

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A butterfly design whose wings are made from two outlined footprints, with the toes forming the upper edges of the wings and a slim body and curled antennae in black linework. The wings are filled with purple and pink shading over bold black outlines and veins, with some red tones at the edges. The tattoo sits centrally on the lower back against warm, reddened skin.

Back Butterfly Footprint Toe Wing Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Hale Mere would dance with Nell Ashby after the harvest supper, because she never stopped. The fiddler, old Amos Crane, said her feet had more tunes in them than his bow, and the dance hall above the mill had a floor of ash boards that rang under her like a bell. Every night she went round the room until the lamps guttered, and every night the caretaker found two clean prints in the chalk dust by the door, one heel and one toe for every step she had taken.

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The winter the river froze, Nell said she would walk to the coast and see the sea before her soles gave out. She laced her boots, pinned a red ribbon to her coat, and went out past the sluice gates without looking back. Crane played one slow reel for her on the step. When the caretaker came in at dawn to sweep, he found the chalk floor covered in prints that went nowhere but up, each pair lifting off the boards in a soft flutter of dust.

They were purple at the centre, the colour of the mere at dusk, and the edges had gone red where the lamplight had lain on them. They circled the rafters three times and went out through the broken pane. Crane never swept that floor again. People say you can still see them on the boards if you stand very still, two dark footmarks that open their wings when the fiddle starts.