Colour monarch butterfly with soft shading and grey swirling vine lines on the ankle, in a fine line and realism style.

Monarch butterfly and vine on ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

A monarch butterfly with orange and black wings sits above a shaded grey shadow on the outer ankle. Thin black swirling vine lines curl up the leg and a single trailing stem runs down towards the heel. The butterfly is coloured and shaded while the vines are plain line work, and the subject sits against a dark plastic-covered surface.

Fine line Realism Ankle Butterfly Monarch butterfly Vine Swirl Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The vine had grown over the chapel wall in the night, and by eight o'clock half of Marsh Lane had come to look at it. Nell Ferrier stood on the bottom rung of a step ladder with secateurs in one hand and her wedding shoes in the other, because Mr Pardoe had sworn the florist's van would not reach the lych gate before noon.

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'Leave it,' said her grandmother from the bench. 'It's only bindweed.' But the stems had curled into loops as neat as copperplate, and on the topmost one a monarch had opened its wings, orange and black, drying in the thin sun. Then another came off the hedge, and another, until the air over the churchyard flickered like a struck match. Nell had read once that they travelled thousands of miles to places they had never seen. She had never quite believed it until now.

Her brother Tom came up the path in a borrowed morning suit, sweating under the collar. 'Mum says you're not to touch the wall before the photographs.' 'I'm not touching it. I'm waiting for them to go.' He sat down beside her on the damp stone. Neither of them mentioned that their father would have known what to do with a vine like this, because he had planted it, and because he had died two Octobers ago with his boots still by the back door.

At ten to twelve the butterflies lifted together and drifted over the gate towards the car park. The florist's van turned in behind them. Nell pushed her feet into the shoes and stepped down into the grass. She left the secateurs on the ladder, the vine exactly where it was, and went in to be married under it.