Black lettering tattoo of the name Ashley with a butterfly and swirling flourishes across the top of a bare foot.

Script name and butterfly on a foot

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black script tattoo reading Ashley sits across the top of a foot, with a small butterfly above the first letters and looping flourishes curling around the name. The linework is solid and even, with no shading or added colour. The foot fills the frame against a grey textured surface, with the tattoo placed centrally and the toes visible below.

Lettering Other Name Script Butterfly Swirl Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brush was still wet when the butterfly landed on the loop of the A, and Albert Pryce, who had lettered every boat and shop front in Cullercoats for thirty-one years, did not flick it away. He held his breath and let it fold its wings over the fresh enamel, dark as the inside of a mussel shell, and waited for it to decide whether the paint was worth the trouble.

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Mrs Hale had ordered the name in the summer, when the guesthouse on Front Street was still a fish merchant's loft with a new roof. She wanted it done in the old copperplate her husband had used on the lifeboat roll, every stroke held to the thickness of a thread. Albert had practised the swashes on newspaper for a week, and by the Thursday all that remained was the last flourish curling under the name like a wave pulled back.

The butterfly did not go. It sat with its wings half open while the sun came round the harbour wall, and Albert, who had never once in his life left a mistake on a board, found he did not want to put a brush to it. He worked the loops around the insect instead, so the line seemed to bend out of its way, and he signed the corner with his initials and the date. When Mrs Hale came down at four with her hat in her hands, she looked at the sign for a long time. "Ivy used to chase those along the sea wall," she said. "She never once caught one."

When the enamel had hardened, Albert told her the butterfly would last as long as the board did, which was the only promise he had ever been able to keep.