Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly tattoo on the inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small butterfly seen from above, with its wings open and antennae extended, sits on the inner forearm near the wrist. The wings are drawn with fine outlines and delicate hatching, with dark shading at the wingtips and a few dots on the lower wing. The photograph is black and white, with a soft blurred background that keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Forearm Butterfly Insect Wing Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boat had been three days out of Skarra when the white butterfly came aboard, blown in from the west with the spray. Old Tam Rennie said it was a bad sign, for no butterfly had any business over open water. His daughter Morag said it was only lost. She set a crust soaked in sugar water on the tiller, and the butterfly stayed.

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It stayed through the calm, when the sail hung like washing and the men sat with their caps over their eyes. It stayed through the squall that tore the mainsail, folding its wings flat against the boards and opening them again once the sea settled. Its wingtips were dusted dark, like a page held too near a candle, and on the underside of the lower wing it carried two small spots. Morag counted them each night, the way her mother had counted the lamps on the headland, and each night there were two.

On the fourth morning the wind came round from the east, warm and sweet with the smell of cut peat. The butterfly lifted from the rail and climbed over the swell towards a dark line on the horizon that was Skarra. Morag understood then that it had never been lost. It had been keeping her company until the land was in sight.

Her father rowed in that afternoon with his cap in his hands. He did not mention bad signs again, and when the boat was hauled up on the shingle, Morag found a single white wing caught in the tiller's cord, and she tied it to the mast for luck.