Black and grey fine line dragonfly tattoo with a trailing stroke on the upper back of a woman with her hair in a bun.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragonfly tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A dragonfly with spread wings sits on the upper back, with a single thin wavy line trailing down from its body. The linework is light and sketchy, with some soft shading in the wings and body. The black and white photograph has a dark vignette around the bare back, with the hair tied in a bun at the top of the frame.

Fine line Back Dragonfly Wing Insect Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Come closer, the lot of you, and mind the pond edge, for my knees are too old to fish a child out of it twice in one summer. You want the tale of Mabel Greaves and the blue dragonfly, and you shall have it, though it is no grand thing. It happened the summer the vicar's wife planted the sweet peas too early and the frost took them all in a night.

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Mabel kept the bottom garden behind the chapel wall, and she was the only one who would talk to the old well. She had a habit of tying a bit of red wool to the gate each morning, for luck, she said, though nobody ever saw her use any luck. One afternoon in July, with the bees lazy in the lavender, she came up the path with her sleeves rolled and a dragonfly sitting on her wrist as cool as you please. It had come off the water and simply chosen her.

Now here is the part the vicar's wife never forgave. Mabel took the wool from the gate, unwound a single thread of it, and tied one end to the creature's tail. Off it went over the wall, the thread trailing behind like a kite string with nothing to hold, and it went straight over the chapel roof towards the far hills. We watched it till it was a speck. Mabel just smiled and went back to her weeding.

The frost came again the next year, and the year after, and the wall fell down in the great wind. But every midsummer, if you stand by the well at dusk, you may see a dragonfly come home low over the grass with a red thread still hanging from it, and Mabel's gate is always open for it. That is all the tale holds, I'm afraid. Now mind that pond.