Small colour tattoo of an orange and yellow butterfly with dark blue outlines on the outer forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange butterfly on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A small butterfly is shown in profile with its wings partly open, outlined in dark blue-black linework. The wings blend from yellow into orange and red, with soft, gradual shading that gives a watercolour-like look. The tattoo sits near the middle of a forearm, against a plain skin background with a sleeve visible at the top of the frame.

Forearm Butterfly Wing Antennae Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The butterfly came aboard in a crate of Lisbon oranges, and I'd have swept it into the bin with the peel if Pim the deckhand hadn't shouted. It was sitting on the galley scales as if it had been ordered. Orange as a brass lamp at the edges, with dark blue-black lines running along the veins, and the yellow near the body gone soft as weak tea. Galley rules say no pets, but I've never had the heart to enforce that on anything with wings.

For three days it rode with us between the flour bins and the range. Captain Hallam came down on the Tuesday, took one look and said a butterfly through the Bay was bad luck. I told him bad luck was a biscuit left out in the wet, and he went off muttering about sailors' superstitions. Meanwhile the thing kept sipping sugar from the lip of my cup as though it paid rent.

On Thursday the wind dropped and we lay still under a sky the colour of pewter. I opened the porthole to let the heat out, and the butterfly rose in a slow curl, circled the lamp twice, then settled on the brass rail by the window. It opened its wings, all that orange catching the low sun, and I thought, well, there's the best thing this galley has ever produced.

Then it lifted and went out over the water, toward land we could not yet see. I'm told gulls will take a butterfly if they can, so I hope it had the sense to keep high. Write soon, and tell Mum the oranges were sweet, though I burned the custard.

Your loving father, Albert