Small purple butterfly tattoo with a solid black body and antennae, placed on the inner wrist.

Small butterfly on the inner wrist

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A small butterfly sits on the inner wrist, with a solid black body, a dot head and two thin antennae. The wings are outlined in black and shaded in soft purple and plum tones, with lighter streaks suggesting the wing panels. The design is centred on pale skin against a dark background.

Forearm Butterfly Wing Antennae Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The keeper's daughter found the butterfly on the lamp glass the morning after the gale, its wings pressed flat against the salt-streaked pane as if someone had pinned it there to dry. Nobody on the rock had seen a butterfly in October. Her father said it was a moth that had lost its way and she should leave it be, but she fetched a jam jar with a sprig of thrift in the bottom and tipped it in, and it did not try to get out.

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The Grey Heron had not come back from Porthowan in six weeks. Her brother Tom was aboard her, and every evening Mara climbed the iron stairs to trim the wick and every evening the butterfly beat its plum-coloured wings against the lid, always turning toward the light. Her father sat by the stove and said the sea keeps what it takes but the lamp keeps what it calls, and that was the only comfort he had.

On the forty-first night she unscrewed the lid and held the jar out over the rail. The butterfly did not fly toward the lamp. It went out past the rocks, low over the black water, and turned once in the beam, and then it was gone into the dark. Mara went back up and watched the sea until her eyes ached.

At first light a lantern showed off the point, then another. The Grey Heron came in on the turn of the tide with her sail in ribbons and Tom at the tiller, grinning like a fool. Mara found the empty jar on the sill with a single scale stuck to the glass, bright as a bruise where the lamp caught it.