Colour realism tattoo of a dark purple and orange butterfly resting beside a pink thistle bloom on the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic butterfly and thistle on the torso

Realism · Other · Colour · Photo

A dark purple butterfly with orange markings on its wings sits beside a pink thistle flower with green bracts. The butterfly and flower are rendered with soft, smooth shading, highlights and fine detail. The tattoo is shown in close framing on bare skin, with the butterfly extending to the upper right and the thistle sitting lower left.

Realism Other Butterfly Thistle Flower Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ovens had been lit since three, and by half four the flour on my forearms had dried to a pale crust that cracked whenever I bent my wrists. Mr Abney came in through the back yard holding a jam jar in both hands, careful as a man carrying a lit candle. Inside were three thistle heads from his allotment, shaggy and magenta, their green bracts still beaded with dew.

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He set the jar on the sill above the proving racks and said nothing about it, which was how he said most things. I had worked for him eleven months and had learned that his silences were rarely empty. Ten minutes later a butterfly came in from the yard, dark as a burnt crust with orange flecks along its hind wings, and it went straight past the cooling trays to the thistle. It opened and closed its wings slowly over the purple head, as if counting the petals.

'Leave it,' he said, when I reached for the broom. 'It's come a long way for its breakfast.' He kneaded a batch of dough without looking at his hands, the way he always did. 'My wife used to say thistles were for people who wanted to be left alone and still wanted company.' I didn't ask whether he meant the flowers or himself.

When the shutter rolled up at six and the first customers stamped in out of the grey, the butterfly lifted from the jar, circled the tray of cut loaves once, and left by the same door it had come through. Mr Abney dusted his palms on his apron and slid the first bloomer into the window. 'Right,' he said. 'Now we open.'