Grey shaded butterfly tattoo with soft gradient wings on the side of a person's ribcage, with the arm raised above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Shaded butterfly on the side of the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A butterfly is tattooed on the side of the torso, shown in profile with its upper and lower wings spread. The wings are rendered with soft grey shading that fades toward the edges, and the body and antennae are drawn with fine dark lines. The background is dark and the skin is lightly lit, with the arm raised above and a black bra strap crossing the lower frame.

Realism Ribs Butterfly Wing Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mara Lusk kept the lamp at Skerrow Point the winter the boat went down, and she kept it lit every night after, because the sea does not stop to ask whether a keeper is grieving. Her husband Tom had always said the water gives back what it takes, but only in its own time, and she had stopped listening to him by February.

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In March a butterfly came up the iron stairs of the tower. Nobody on the island had seen one so early. It was grey as sea fog, darker at the root of each wing and paler toward the edges, as if someone had rubbed charcoal into it and then breathed on the tips. She cupped it in her hands and it did not struggle. It only rested, feelers turning toward the lamp.

Each night after that it sat on the brass rail beside the great lens while she trimmed the wick and read out the tide tables to it. She told it about the price of paraffin and the gull that stole her washing. It never asked her for anything, and she found she had begun to save the kettle's last cup for it, which was foolish, and she did it anyway.

On the first still night in April she carried it down to the shingle and opened her hands. It lifted slowly over the black water, then turned south, the way the lifeboat had been heading that night. Out past the reef a lantern showed, then a second, bobbing toward the slipway. Mara climbed back up and kept the lamp burning until dawn, and by morning both boats were tied up and their crews were asleep in the bottom of the hull.