Black and grey butterfly wing and an orange ribbon beside Proverbs 31:25 script lettering, tattooed on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Scripture lettering and butterfly on upper back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a black and grey butterfly wing with swirled detailing on the left, beside an orange ribbon with shaded edges and a short script word on it. To the right, a block of fine cursive script reads 'She is clothed with strength and dignity and she laughs without fear of the future. Proverbs 31:25', with the reference set below in bold print. The image is a close, straight-on photograph of the upper back, with the lettering and ribbon as the main focus against a dark background.

Lettering Back Butterfly Ribbon Script Scripture Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Past the last dome on Hesper Reach, where the wind came down off the ice in long grey ropes, there lived a mender called Ilse Corran who kept a loom older than the colony. Every thread she spun was pulled from that wind, and every coat she wove was left on the ridge path for whoever walked it with a dim lamp. Nobody asked what she charged. They left bread on her step, and she left the coats folded at the door.

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One autumn a girl came up the ridge road carrying a dead lamp and a name she would not say. Ilse sat her by the stove and taught her to throw the shuttle. The girl's hands were quick, but her shoulders stayed up near her ears, as if the sky might fall on them. Ilse said nothing about it. She only wound a length of orange thread from the old spool, the colour of the last sun before the dimming, and let it run through the warp where the pattern wanted a bright line.

Winter came on hard and the ridge road closed. The girl wove through it, coat after coat, humming a tune with the wrong words. When the thaw broke she stood in the doorway with her collar open to the air and laughed at a gull on the rail, and the sound went down the valley like a dropped bell. Ilse heard it from the loom and kept her hands moving.

In spring a moth as big as a palm came down from the high vents, its wings dark at the edges and swirled like smoke. It settled on the loom beside the orange thread. Ilse tied the thread into a loop at its shoulder and said the words her mother had copied from a book with no cover: she is clothed with strength, and she laughs without fear of what is coming. The moth lifted and climbed the ridge, and the orange line went with it, bright against the grey.