Small black and grey butterfly tattoo on the inside of an ankle, with a pink beaded anklet and a bed in the background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small butterfly on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A small black butterfly sits on the ankle of a bare foot, with wings drawn in fine dark linework and some grey shading. A pink beaded anklet sits just above the tattoo, and the foot rests on a wooden surface in front of a bed. The warm, dim lighting softens the image, but the tattoo's outline and wing detail remain clear.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every morning for a whole summer the small black butterfly came to the sill of the bakehouse at the edge of Hollin Wood, and every morning Martha Vane set a saucer of honey beside the loaves for it. The village said the wood never gave anything away for free, and Martha said that was why she paid it in honey.

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In the autumn the baker's boy, Tom Greer, went into the trees after a strayed goat and did not come back by dark. Martha took her lantern to the stile and stood there until her feet ached. The butterfly came out of the dusk and flew ahead of her, low over the ferns, its wings the colour of old ink, stopping on each branch until she could see the path again.

Deeper in, where the bracken gave way to a clearing, she found Tom sitting against a grey stone with the goat asleep beside him. He said a woman in a faded shawl had told him to wait and he had waited, as he was bid. Martha looked round for the woman and saw only the butterfly settling on the stone, folding and unfolding its wings as if it were counting something.

They walked home together with the lantern swinging between them. Martha never learned who the woman in the shawl had been, and the next morning she set out the honey as usual. The butterfly took a little, then rose and drifted back towards the trees, and Martha left the saucer full for it anyway.

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