Colour tattoo of a purple ribbon shaped into a butterfly with black swirl detailing, above black script reading I Will Fight, on skin.

Purple ribbon butterfly with I Will Fight script

Lettering · Colour · Photo

A purple ribbon forms the shape of a butterfly, with a heart-shaped loop at the top and black scrolling ornaments across the wings. Black script reading "I Will Fight" sits beneath it, and the lettering is cleanly outlined with a slight flourish on the letters. Shading in several tones of purple gives the wings depth against the plain skin background, and the design is centred in the frame.

Lettering Ribbon Butterfly Heart Swirl Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The butterfly came in through the scullery window on the third day of the gale, and Mrs Hessey caught it in a tea towel because it was too tired to fly away from her. Its wings were a faded purple ribbon knotted at the top into a heart, and black curls ran across them like the ironwork on the harbour gate. She set it on a saucer of sugar water by the range and told the lodgers to leave it be.

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Mr Arkwright, who mended nets on the slipway and had lodged there longer than the paint had lasted on the door, said a ribbon-winged thing was a sea-maid's token. Keep it, he said, and say its name each morning, and it will not let the weather take what's yours. Nobody thought much of this until the Mary Ann failed to come round the point at dusk, with the wind pushing her onto the Teeth and the lamp at the lighthouse swallowed in rain.

Mrs Hessey opened the window. The butterfly lifted off the saucer, trembled once against the glass, and then went out into the dark as though it knew the road. The lodgers stood at the sill and saw a small purple light go low over the water, turn, and turn again, and in its wake the Mary Ann came round the rocks with her sail torn and her crew shouting.

In the morning the saucer was empty and the sill was wet. Mrs Hessey still says the name over the porridge pot, though no one has seen the thing since, and a single purple thread hangs from the gatepost where it must have caught on the wood going out.