A shaded purple butterfly tattoo with thin antennae and curled wire-like details on the upper arm of a person with long brown hair.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple butterfly on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A butterfly with spread wings sits on the inner upper arm, shown from the side with long brown hair visible at the right edge. The wings use layered violet and deep purple shading with lighter highlights along the veins, giving a soft three-dimensional look. The plain pink and blurred background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Peg, you will want to know whether Mr Carrick ever came back for his gloves. He did, on Thursday, though he had the decency to look ashamed when he asked. I told him they had gone to the lost property tin with the rest of the Christmas bits and bobs, which is the sort of lie Mother would have admired.

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The band struck up the Quickstep and the floor filled, and I stood by the cloakroom hatch counting tickets. Every girl who came through the doors had something pinned to her coat, a poppy or a bit of tin or a paper rose. Violet Ashworth came in wearing the cape she made from the old blackout curtains, dyed plum in her mum's copper. The light from the glitter ball went through the cloth the way it goes through the chapel windows on Abbey Road. At the shoulder she wore a brooch shaped like a moth, and when she turned under the lamps its wings went from bruise-dark to the colour of violets in April, with a silver thread running along every vein.

Around eleven the brooch came loose and dropped under the cloakroom bench. I found it when I swept, and I should have given it back straight away. Instead I sat on the bench with it in my palm until the band packed up, turning it so the light caught the veins.

Vi came for her cape at half past, and I said nothing about the brooch. She'll have it on her coat again by Saturday, I expect. Write back soon and tell me the Leeds dances are not as dull as you say. I've kept the tin safe for you.

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