Black ink line drawing of a sitting elephant spraying a cluster of butterflies from its trunk, with the word Always in script, drawn on plain paper.

Elephant spraying butterflies design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A simple line drawing of a sitting elephant with its trunk raised, releasing a cluster of outlined butterflies and small star marks. The word Always is written in loose script beside the elephant's front leg. The drawing uses single black ink lines with no shading, on a pale beige background, and the design is arranged diagonally from the lower left to the upper right.

Fine line Elephant Butterfly Trunk Script Star Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The elephant arrived at Hensley Cross fair in the August of 1956, riding on a flatbed lorry with its ears folded like wet newspaper. Sid Oakes, the keeper, let us feed her ginger biscuits through the gap in the hurdles, and by the Tuesday my sister Ruth had decided she was going to marry her.

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Ruth was fourteen and had a habit of writing on her wrist in blue biro. That afternoon she sat on a hay bale by the cattle pen, scribbling one word over and over until I asked what it said. 'Always,' she said, and blew on it as if the ink were still wet. Our mother had come back from the Co-op that morning with the news that Dad would not be home from the Lancashire pits before Christmas, and Ruth had been quiet since.

On the last night, when the lamps came on along the midway, Sid lifted his arm and the elephant raised her trunk and sprayed a fine cloud over the crowd. It was not water. Ruth swore it was butterflies, pale and outlined in black, rising over the tombola stall and drifting towards the church spire. I laughed at her. Then one landed on my sleeve and stayed there, and I stopped laughing.

In September a postcard came from Sid with a drawing of the elephant on it, sitting up with her trunk lifted, and beside her front leg the word Ruth had been practising. Dad came home for Christmas after all. I still keep the postcard in the tin with the buttons, and the word is still there in the same loose hand.