Traditional style tattoos of a red flower with green leaves at the wrist and a red and black butterfly on the back of a hand, with small star dots on the knuckles.

Red flower and butterfly on the hand

Traditional · Hand · Colour · Photo

A red five-petal flower with an orange centre sits within a band of green and grey leaves across the wrist, and a red, orange and black butterfly with grey wing edges sits on the back of the hand. Bold black outlines, solid fills and smooth grey shading define both designs, and small black star dots are scattered across the knuckles and fingers. The hand is shown against a grey pavement, with the butterfly centred and the flower placed above it.

Traditional Hand Forearm Flower Butterfly Star Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ysolde,

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The frost has finally let go of the Pellian orchards, and the cherry trees along the Mercy Road have put out their first blossom, five petals each, the red of a fresh cut. I walked the whole avenue on Tuesday counting them for the Queen's gardener, who has never once in forty years believed me when I say the blossom comes earlier each spring. He wants proof. I have brought him a sheaf of pressed petals in a ledger, and he has put his thumb on the orange heart of each one and said nothing at all.

Something stranger happened at the eastern gate. A butterfly, larger than my palm, settled on the rail where the guard Tobiah keeps his lamp. Its wings were grey at the edges, black through the shoulders, and striped amber across the middle like the glass in the chapel windows when the sun drops behind the mill. Tobiah swore it had come down from the mountain, where nothing has lived since the old king sealed the passes. He tried to brush it away and it walked onto his knuckle instead, slow as a bishop, and stayed there until the bell rang for vespers.

I did not tell him what I believed, which is that the butterfly was looking for the sailor who came through last autumn, the one with ink stars pricked across his knuckles who left black dots on the causeway and never paid his tithe. I have kept one of his stars in my pocket since. It is a small smudge on a scrap of linen, nothing more. Still, I think I shall take it to the gate on Sunday and see whether the butterfly comes back.

Your loving brother, Aldric