Four cartoon-style butterflies in teal and orange with black outlines, arranged in a diagonal line across the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four butterflies in a line on the side

Ribs · Colour · Photo

Four butterflies decrease in size as they trail diagonally across the skin, each with teal and orange wings, black outlines and small antennae. The linework is bold and uniform, with flat colour fills and little shading. The tattoo sits on the side of the torso, with dark fabric visible at the top edge of the frame.

Ribs Butterfly Wing Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm kept the lower terraces of the monastery at Carrow, where the goats came up in spring and the path gave out at the old wall. Each morning he walked the rows of beans with a hazel stick, and each morning four small butterflies were waiting on the gatepost, teal as river stones and orange as the last of the apricots.

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The villagers said they were the abbot's dead brothers, come to check the work. The abbot said nothing, which was his way, and gave Anselm the task of counting them. Three, he reported on the first day. Four on the second, when the smallest one arrived late, its wings still crumpled, and hung off the post like a thought nobody had finished.

On the feast of the cold rain, the largest butterfly flew off down the valley toward the mill and did not come back. The next day the second went, then the third. Anselm sat on the gatepost with his stick across his knees and counted what was left, which was one, the smallest, and it would not leave him.

Some say the abbot sent him down to fetch it. Others say the little one simply grew tired of waiting and followed the others down to the water. Anselm wrote in the ledger that the beans were in and the goats were fed, and beneath that, in a smaller hand, that the count was one, and that one was enough to be going on with.