Realistic orange and black butterfly tattoo on the ribs of a person whose hand rests on their chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange butterfly on a ribcage

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a realistic butterfly tattoo with spread wings, shown in orange with black markings and shading. The butterfly sits on the side of the ribs, and a hand with black painted nails rests on the chest at the top of the frame. The plain pale skin and soft lighting keep the focus on the tattoo.

Realism Ribs Butterfly Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The kitchen range has been lit since four and the frost on the inside of the window hasn't cleared once. You asked in your last letter whether the orchard survived the hard weather. It did, mostly. Father lost two of the old Bramleys and the byre roof went in the gale, but the bees are alive, which is more than anyone expected in November.

Something else happened, and I am not sure how to put it so you will believe it. On the morning after the gale, I found a swallowtail on the sill of the dairy door, wings spread flat as if someone had pressed it there to dry. It was orange, the colour of the pumpkins we left in the field too long, with black bars running through it like the lead in a window. I thought it was dead. It was not quite. When I touched a wing it lifted, very slowly, and settled again.

I carried it to the range in a jam jar with the lid pierced for air. Mother said I was daft, and then she sat down and watched it with me for an hour. By dusk it had opened and closed its wings four times, and each time the orange seemed brighter against the black, as though the heat were coaxing the colour out.

I am writing because yesterday I took the jar out to the orchard and unscrewed the lid. It sat on my finger for a long moment, then went up into the grey air over the frozen grass, heading south-west toward the estuary. I could not tell you whether it will survive the night. But I wanted you to know it was here, and that it was warm.

Love, Ada