Grey pencil-style drawing of a cartoon creature sitting beside a small heart and a butterfly, with the script words There's always something worth living for beneath.

Cartoon creature with butterfly and quote design

Black and grey · Flash

A monochrome drawing of a seated cartoon creature with large dark eyes and a small heart above its head, shown in profile. A sketched butterfly with outlined wings sits to the upper right, and a cursive script quote runs across the bottom of the white background. The shading is soft grey with dark outlines and no colour.

Cartoon character Butterfly Heart Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the keeper of the tallest clock in Mirrowmere, a kingdom that never appeared on any map, and every morning you climb the forty-one steps to wind it before the bells. The grey creature with the wide dark eyes lives in the belfry rafters, where he has lived since the spring the river froze. He is not supposed to be there. Nobody has ever managed to tell him so.

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Today the clockwork jams. A cog the size of a cartwheel has seized on a moth-eaten ribbon, and the whole town below will wake late unless you crawl into the works. The creature watches from the beam with his ears folded back, then hops down onto your shoulder and taps the brass with one soft paw, as though he knows exactly where the trouble sits. You laugh at him, and he blinks slowly, the way a creature does when it has decided to be patient with you.

Halfway through the afternoon a butterfly drifts in through the louvres, pale as a folded letter, and settles on the bell rope. A small heart of breath hangs above the creature's head, and he stares at the wings for so long that you forget the cog entirely. When you finally free the gear, the tower shudders into motion and the bells ring eleven minutes late. Nobody in Mirrowmere notices. The butterfly has already gone.

That night you lie awake listening to the clock tick through the floorboards. In the morning there is a single grey feather on the windowsill, and beside it, smudged into the dust, a faint shape of wings, as if someone pressed a hand there and then thought better of leaving.