Drawn tattoo design of a dragonfly with teal and purple translucent wings, its tail trailing a cloud of small black stars across a pale grey background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragonfly with star trail design

Mixed · Flash

A dragonfly drawn in pencil with teal and purple shading on its wings and body, with a small black star trail streaming from its tail. The wings have fine vein lines and soft gradient colour, while the stars are outlined and filled in black. The plain grey background is shaded softly around the subject.

Dragonfly Wing Star Trail Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody had told the dragonfly it was the last night. It struck the lamp above the big top at half past nine, bounced off the canvas, and dropped into the sawdust like a snipped ribbon. I was the one who scooped it up, because Mr Ashdown was busy counting ticket stubs and I was the only hand left under forty who still cared.

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It was Mr Ashdown's trick, the one he had sold to the council for a Christmas fair in 1961 and never stopped apologising for. A dragonfly fed on sugar water, taught to circle the lantern on a thread so fine the crowd swore it flew by itself. Dolly punched out the black paper stars by hand and dropped them into a tin. Every show the creature dragged a trail of them from its tail, and the eye followed it straight to the far corner where the tumblers waited. Tonight the tin was empty, and the dragonfly was tired.

I held it on my palm. It weighed less than a folded bus ticket, and its wings had faded from the bright colours of the posters to something like a bruise, purple at the edges, teal where the light caught them. I carried it past the caravans, where the field had gone grey and the lorries were already loaded, and I tipped my hand over the wet grass. For a moment it only sat there. Then it lifted, and a fine spill of stars came off its tail and sank into the dew.

Ashdown found me at the hedge with the empty jar in his hand. He looked at the grass for a long time and said the ticket money would cover diesel to Bristol and no further. Above the hawthorn a few black stars hung in the air a moment longer than they should have, then went out one by one.