Drawing of a tattoo design showing a dreamcatcher with feathers, ribbons, two roses and butterflies, shaded in pink and purple tones.

Dreamcatcher with roses and butterflies

Colour · Flash

The design centres on a large dreamcatcher with a web pattern and a smaller hanging dreamcatcher, with feathers and ribbons trailing below. Two roses sit at the lower left, and butterflies appear at the top left, upper right and lower right. The linework is dark and bold, with soft pink and violet washes behind the motifs on a plain white background.

Dreamcatcher Feather Ribbon Rose Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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Mrs Okonedo has finally let me take the ribbons down from the ceiling of the Palais, the blue and silver ones we strung up for the Coronation Ball, and I have been sitting on the back stairs with them in my lap for an hour, trying to decide whether to keep them. You'd laugh. They are the colour of the dusty pink on the posters, and they curl like the tails of kites. Dad would say they're rubbish, but Mr Carrow from the bandstand said they were the only thing in the place that didn't look tired.

Things are different here since you went. The band plays the same foxtrots, but the mirror ball has a crack across it, so the light falls in little torn pieces across the floor. Last Saturday a boy from the pier tipped a jar of pressed butterflies he'd collected over the dance floor. They drifted down like dropped confetti, and nobody swept them until the lights came up. I found one stuck to my shoe and kept it in my missal.

I've decided to make a dreamcatcher from the hoops of the old bunting, the way you showed me with the willow at home. Mrs Okonedo says it will catch nothing but dust, but I think it might catch the Saturday nights, just the good bits, and hold them till you're back. Come home at Easter. Bring your new shoes. I'll save you the last waltz.

Love, Peg