Small realistic colour tattoo of a firefly with amber-lit wings and a dark red head on the inner wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Firefly on the inner wrist

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A small firefly with thin antennae, a dark red head, a striped grey-brown body and translucent wings sits on the inner wrist. The linework is fine, with soft shading on the body and wings, and a warm amber glow fades beneath the abdomen. The insect is centred on a pale background with a light sparkle effect around the wrist.

Realism Forearm Insect Wing Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band has reached the third waltz before you notice the light in the car park is not coming from the lamp above the door. It hangs low over the hay field, a few dozen sparks going on and off like someone signalling across a valley, and Ray Dawes stands at the bottom of the steps with his cap in his hand, pretending he has not been watching you through the whole of the first set.

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He asks you to step outside before the interval. You tell him you are not a girl who goes into fields with men she has known for a fortnight. He laughs and says the field is only forty yards, and that he has a jam jar in his coat pocket for no good reason at all. You go anyway, the stubble soft under your shoes, and he cups a firefly in his palms. Its belly glows through his fingers, the colour of a lamp seen through amber glass.

'They only do that to find each other,' you say. 'Then they're no use to anyone else,' he says, and you have no answer, because he has opened his hands and the thing has risen past the hedge, and the next one is already answering it from the dark.

Back inside, the band strikes up again and the floor fills with couples who have no idea how many lights are out there. You take his hand for the last waltz. Through the open doors you can still see the field blinking, one spark and then another, and you count the ones that answer until the music stops.