Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mother and sleeping baby line drawing with butterflies

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a mother's profile with a flowing hairline that sweeps across the top of the image, leaning over a sleeping baby with closed eyes. Two butterflies with patterned wings sit in the upper area and lower right corner. The linework is bold and continuous in places, with fine detail in the wings and facial features, all in dark brown and black on a plain tan background.

Fine line Mother Profile Butterfly Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats had been gone since four, and Nell Harrow had counted their lamps past the breakwater until they merged into one smear on the black water and then into nothing at all. She turned from the window with the kettle in her hand and found the kitchen full of butterflies. Three of them, pale-winged and patterned like old lace, had come in over the sill chasing the smell of the sweet peas she kept in a jam jar. One hung above the table. Another had settled on the rim of the washing basket.

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Her son Tom slept in the drawer she had lined with his father's oilskin, one fist raised beside his cheek, breathing the slow small breaths that the whole village seemed to envy. Nell set the kettle down without filling it and bent over the drawer until her hair fell forward and made a curtain between her and the room. She had done this a hundred times that week. The gulls quarrelled on the slipway. The tide made its noise against the wall.

The bell at the harbour mouth rang at half past nine, which meant nothing, because the bell rang for every boat that came in and every boat that stayed out. Nell did not go down. She stayed where she was with her cheek close to her son's warm head and listened to the soft wing-beats above the cot, like someone turning pages, and let herself believe that the Marigold would be at the quay before the lamp burned down.

At first light a horn sounded from the far side of the bay, two short notes and a long one. The butterflies lifted from the sweet peas all at once and went out through the open window, and Nell laughed, and Tom opened his eyes.