Colour tattoo on a thigh of a butterfly whose wings show lion faces with yellow eyes, beside a purple lily and an orange tiger lily, with black vine swirls.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion-winged butterfly with lilies on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly whose wings are lion faces, with yellow eyes and a black-shaded nose and whiskers, sits at the centre of the design. A purple lily sits above it and an orange tiger lily with dark spots sits below, joined by fine black vine swirls. The shading is smooth and realistic, with bold colour in the flowers and warm browns in the lion.

Realism Botanical Thigh Butterfly Lion Lily Flower Vine Eye Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has closed the Fallowmere road since noon, and Mrs Tarrant has given you the room above the kitchen, the only one with a hearth that draws. You sit at the sill with a pencil and a sheet of cartridge paper, trying to draw what you saw at the bottom of the lane before the drifts came over the stile. Lilies, you think first. Then a butterfly, and then, when you press the lead down, a lion looking out from the place where a wing should be.

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Downstairs the sign above the door creaks in the wind. It shows a lion painted by her brother Aldo, who went south to sail before the war and never sent a letter back. Mrs Tarrant told you so over soup, and she told you too that he painted orange lilies on every window frame in the place, freckled in the throat, because their scent was the only thing that let him sleep. You give your butterfly the same yellow eyes as the lion on the sign, and shade its nose until the paper goes soft under your thumb. Whiskers, then the fine black vine that curls away from the wings like smoke.

By the third night the snow has packed the window to the top pane, and you wake to a silence so complete you can hear the hearth ash settle. When you go down, the front door is clear. Mrs Tarrant stands on the step with a broom she has not used, looking up the lane, where a single pale butterfly is opening and closing on the frost of the gatepost. Each wing carries a lion's face, and the gold stare follows you when you step closer. You have one sheet of paper and no pencil for it, so you simply watch it go.