Pink and black shaded butterfly tattoo with a small star beside it, on the outer upper arm of a light-skinned person.

Pink and black butterfly on an arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly with outstretched wings is shown in black linework with soft grey shading and pink fills on the wings, with black spots along the wing edges. A small eight-point star and a few dots sit to the lower right, and a faint swirling shadow runs across the skin behind the design. The photograph is taken close up, with the tattoo filling most of the frame against a plum-coloured fabric on the left.

Upper arm Butterfly Star Dot Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moth-keeper's daughter had been told the wind carried the dead's last breath, so she never trusted it. When the north gale tore the lantern loose from the orchard gate, she ran after it barefoot across the wet clover, and it was the butterfly she caught first, pinned in the glow like a scrap of pink silk someone had forgotten to sew. Its wings were scorched at the tips and dotted with black where the rain had got in, but it was alive and furious, and it pulled her hand toward the old well as if it had business there.

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The well had a star painted on its lid, eight points, faded to the colour of weak tea. Her grandmother had said it was there to tell travellers which way was home. Nobody had lifted the lid in forty years. The butterfly settled on the rim and opened its wings, and the girl saw that the spots were not stains at all but tiny holes, the kind a needle leaves, and light was pushing through them from below.

She lifted the lid. Inside was no water, only a cool shelf of moss and a row of jam jars, each holding a single dim star. The butterfly flew down among them and sat on the nearest one, folding and unfolding its wings as if counting. She understood then why the lantern had been torn away. Her grandmother had been keeping the stars company, and now someone else would have to.

She took the smallest jar home under her coat and set it on the kitchen sill, where it still glows when the north wind blows.