Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Scorpion and butterfly stencil design
Black and grey · Flash
A stencil style design showing a scorpion with a curled tail rising up the page, with an ornate butterfly with swirled wings at the top. The scorpion's segments and legs are filled with bold, solid shapes and tapering stripes, while the butterfly has fine decorative scrolls within its wings. The image is monochrome grey on a plain white background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Marguerite,
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You will think I have finally lost my wits, but the scorpion came ashore on Tuesday in a crate of Portuguese cork, and it has been sitting on my windowsill ever since, dead as a biscuit and looking very fine. Sergeant Pryce from the lifeboat says they come over in timber all the time and nobody notices until someone is stung. I have been keeping the crate lid shut.
The thing is, when I lifted the sheet of brown paper it was wrapped in, I found a stencil cut from it. Someone had cut a scorpion curling up the page, its tail a tall hook, and above it a butterfly whose wings were all scrolls, like the curls on the end of a violin. The cutting was so fine I could hold it to the lamp and see the light through every hole. I think a ship's cook or some bored deckhand made it to decorate a chest or a boat's name, and I cannot tell which.
I took it up to the lamp room last night and laid it over the glass, and the beam threw the pattern out across the sea in a shape no one would expect. Two fishing boats changed course to look. I have decided to keep the stencil, though I will not keep the scorpion. I have enclosed a pencil tracing in case you want it on your kitchen wall in Penzance.
Write soon, and tell Tom to stop eating the candles.
Love, Ada
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