Colour tattoo of a dragonfly with green and yellow wings on the lower leg, shown from above in a realistic style.

Dragonfly on a lower leg

Realism · Calf · Colour · Photo

A large dragonfly is shown from above, with a dark green-grey body, black legs and antennae, and a long segmented abdomen ending in a pointed tip. The wings are finely outlined with a net-like vein pattern and filled with soft yellow, orange and green shading. The tattoo sits centrally on the leg against plain skin, with a teal backdrop and tape visible around the edges of the photo.

Realism Calf Dragonfly Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas carried the last bucket of mortar up the north stair of Grenmere Keep with the lantern held out in front of him, because the third step had gone and the drop beneath it was full of nettles. He had been sent by the parish to close the gaps before winter, and the parish had paid him in advance, which was the only reason he was up there at all after dark.

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Nobody in Holm Ashby would climb the keep at dusk. The old people said the lord who built it had drained the moat to dig for silver, and that the mud had choked the young dragonflies in their shells that summer. Every year since, a single dragonfly came back to the ruin in the hottest weeks, and the old people said it was the lord's wife, who had begged him to leave the water alone and had been shut in the chapel for her trouble. Tomas had always thought this a poor story for a keep with so little left standing.

The dragonfly was on the sill of the east window when he reached the top, its wings open and catching the lantern light, green in one fold and amber in the next. It did not move when he set the bucket down. He told it he was only here for the mortar, and that the wall would hold better for it. It went on watching him with its great pale eyes.

He worked until his arms ached, and when he looked up the light had gone and the sill was empty. In the morning the moat was full again, the first water in forty years, because the sluice gate at the bottom had finally been mended by the same hands that had patched the wall. Tomas mixed the next batch thinner that night, so that it would take its time to set.