Black linework dragonfly with teal accents and swirling ornaments on the top of a woman's foot, in a fine line style.

Dragonfly and swirls on a foot

Fine line · Other · Mixed · Photo

A dragonfly with outlined wings and a teal-tinted body sits among curling black scrollwork and small dots on the top of a foot. The linework is fine and even, with light grey shading inside the wings and teal detailing on the body and a few droplet shapes. The foot fills most of the frame against a grey pavement, with a sandal visible at the top edge.

Fine line Other Dragonfly Swirl Dot Wing Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door bangs at ten to five and you are already late for the proving trays. Mrs Okonedo has left the back gate open again, and the first van of flour is parked across the lane with its hazards blinking amber on the wet cobbles. You wipe your hands on the apron that smells of yesterday's rye and fill the piping bag, because the wedding cakes for Saturday will not decorate themselves.

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Dawn is still an hour off. The window over the sink shows only your reflection and the lamp above the bench. You pipe scrolls in royal icing, one curl leaning into the next, the way Nan taught you on a tea towel before she let you near a cake. Then the dragonfly: a slim dark body, four wings outlined and left pale, and at the thorax a dab of teal gel you mixed from a colour the supplier calls lagoon and you privately call the ditch behind the allotments where you caught them as a girl.

Pradeep comes in at quarter past with his hood still up, sees the sheet of sugar wings drying on the parchment, and stops. He says they look like they could lift off the tray. You tell him they can't, not until the humidity drops, and he laughs and carries the bread out to the racks. The dots you add last, small as sesame, a little spray on either side of the wings like water off a weir.

When the sky finally greys over the bins, the cake boxes are stacked by the door and the dragonfly sits on the top one, the only thing in the kitchen that is not hot or floury. You fold the bag over, rinse the nozzle, and step out into the lane with sugar still on your sleeve. Behind you the bread is cooling, and the dragonfly holds its wings out to a morning that has not yet decided what it wants to be.