Black and grey realism tattoo on a forearm showing small feet, butterflies and a script name in fine lettering.

Script name, feet and butterflies on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A forearm tattoo with a black script name at the top, a large realistic pair of small feet in the centre and several white butterfly silhouettes around them. The feet are shaded in soft greys with fine detail in the toes and skin creases, set against a smoky grey background that fades at the edges. The photograph is taken at an angle on a wooden floor, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had been out an hour when Nan Hobday saw the first white wings lift off the saltmarsh and set her bucket of grey chalk down on the harbour step. Below her, the sand still held the small prints her granddaughter had left the afternoon before, pressed in a neat row toward the water, toes spread as if she had been running and then changed her mind.

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Laylah had gone up to the mainland on the Tuesday boat with a cardboard case, a borrowed coat and a promise to write on Sundays. Nan had marked the Sundays on the calendar beside the range. Three had passed without a letter. More butterflies gathered over the marsh as the mist thinned, drifting in slow loops toward the wall, and Nan told herself they were only drawn to the warm stone.

She knelt and began to chalk around each print, a careful outline, the way the fishermen's wives marked the boats' names on the wall so the weather could not take them. The butterflies settled on the wet stones beside her, folding and unfolding their wings as though they were reading. When she reached the last print, the one where the heel dragged a little, the sun came over the headland and the sand turned gold.

Her phone buzzed in her apron pocket. A photograph of a kettle on a strange hob, a grey window, and a line underneath: Got your letter, Nan. Coming on the early boat Sunday. Nan looked at the marks she had drawn and, for once, did not rub them out. "Well," she said to the butterflies, "you can all go home now."

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