Black linework butterfly tattoo with pink-filled wings and swirling scrollwork on lightly tanned skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate butterfly with pink wings

Other · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly tattoo with open wings made of black scrolling lines, with curled tendrils extending from the wing edges and a long looping tail below. The wings and body are filled with pink, with small pink dots set along the wing tips and curls. The photograph is taken close up on plain skin, with the design centred in the frame.

Other Butterfly Swirl Scrollwork Wing Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been bending wire since the spring the gate at Hollin Eve fell off its hinges, and by now your hands know the work better than your head does. The forest stands dark beyond the last orchard wall, and the forge ticks as it cools. Mrs Pell wants a butterfly for the lychgate, she says, something to keep the wind honest. You tell her wire doesn't care what she wants.

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Each scroll you close with pliers, and each curl wants to unwind into another. The tail is the difficulty. You loop it three times, then a fourth, and it springs back into a question mark every time you turn away. Old Tobin from the mill watches from the doorway, chewing a grass stem, and says the forest is teaching you patience whether you asked for it or not.

On the ninth night a girl comes running out of the trees with her shoes in her hand, asking for her brother. The wood has taken him, she says, following a light that wasn't there. You have no lantern to give her but the forge. You take the unfinished butterfly from the bench, press the pink glass stoppers from the cordial bottles into its wings, and hold it up in the doorway. Its curls catch the firelight and throw small pink stars across the path.

The boy walks out an hour later, sulking, with thorns in his sleeve. Next morning the lychgate has its butterfly, and every bead has a faint scratch where the wind has worked it. You never tell Mrs Pell about the girl. She would only ask why the tail is so long, and you would only say it was made to be followed.