Realistic colour tattoo of five blue butterflies with dark edged wings, arranged in a diagonal line across the upper shoulder.

Five blue butterflies across a shoulder

Realism · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

Five blue butterflies with dark outlines and white spotted wing edges fly in a diagonal line from the top of the shoulder down towards the upper arm. The wings have soft blue shading with darker tones on the lower edges, giving them a dimensional, lifelike look. The butterflies vary in size, with the largest near the top and the smallest at the lower end, and they sit against plain skin with no other design around them.

Realism Shoulder Butterfly Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas, the snow on the Gallow Pass went off all at once this week, the way it does when the wind turns warm from the south, and by Tuesday the whole col was running with meltwater. I write from the inn window with the ledger open beside me, because Mrs Pryce wants the mule fodder tally squared before the carrier comes up on Friday, and because I have something to tell you that I would rather not say to the carrier.

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On Tuesday morning, before the sun cleared the eastern ridge, five blue butterflies came over the lip of the pass. I know what you will say, that it is too early in the year and too high for them. I said the same to myself. They rode the cold air in a rough diagonal line, the biggest first, its wings the colour of the lake under cloud, the small ones trailing behind as if they were being reeled down the slope on a thread. Each had a white freckling along the edge of its wings, like frost on a hem.

They did not settle. They drifted past the stable roof, past the wash line, and out over the stream, and I stood in the yard with a bucket of ash going cold in my hands and watched until the last, the smallest, dipped under the alder and was gone. Mrs Pryce says the thaw shook them out of the rocks. I think they were looking for someone to tell.

So I am telling you. Come up when the road is clear and bring your father's compass, the one with the cracked glass. I want to walk the line they made and see where it ends.