Purple and black tattoo of a butterfly whose wings form a realistic eye, with a second wing and a dark stroke beside it, on bare skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly wing eye tattoo

Neo-trad · Other · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a butterfly whose wing patterns surround a shaded grey eye with a small highlight, and a second eye sits on a smaller wing to the right. Bold black outlines frame the wings, with purple shading inside the wing panels and soft grey tones in the eyes. The design is centred on a pale background of skin, with dark tapered strokes above the eyes.

Neo-trad Other Butterfly Eye Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming off the canopy of Saltergate market since six, and Dorothy Quill had not sold a single case of wings all morning. I sat behind her stall with my hands up my sleeves, counting pins in the velvet tray, because counting was better than listening to the gutter.

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The case at the back was the one she never let me price. Inside, on a bed of faded purple baize, lay a butterfly the size of my palm, its forewings pinned open. Every panel had an eye painted into the gaps between the veins, grey irises gone soft with age, each with a tiny white star where the light caught it. Dorothy said a dealer from Hackney had made them for a travelling showman in 1911, and that the showman swore they could see who was lying. I told her that was nonsense. She said that was why you cover them when you close.

On Thursday a man in a wet anorak stopped at the case and asked the price. I told him it wasn't for sale. He leaned closer, and the eyes seemed to swing toward the ticket booth across the square, where a boy was counting coins into his palm. The man laughed, bought a bag of pear drops instead, and walked off. Forty minutes later the boy was led away by two officers for pocketing a stall's takings. Dorothy said nothing about it. She only drew the baize over the glass.

When she died that winter I inherited the stall, the tray and the case. I still open it some mornings before the rain starts. The eyes never blink, and I have stopped telling people they do not watch. I just keep the cloth folded at the top of the case, ready to cover them when I close.