Small black and grey dragonfly tattoo with shaded wings on the inner wrist and forearm of a person in a white top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small dragonfly on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small dragonfly is tattooed on the inner wrist, with its body running vertically and its wings spread horizontally. The wings are shaded with soft grey wash and fine hatched lines, while the head and body are solid black. The plain light background and close framing keep the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Forearm Dragonfly Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boiler at Scarrow Cottage Hospital gave out on the second Tuesday of February, and by midnight the corridors smelled of cold stone. Nell Parr had the night ward to herself, six beds and a clock that ran a few minutes fast. She was checking the drip in bed four when she saw the dragonfly on the sill, its body black as a pen stroke, its wings grey and fine as ash on paper. Nobody had opened that window since October.

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Mr Tindall in bed four had not slept since the ambulance brought him in. 'Leave it be,' he said. 'My gran used to say a dragonfly that comes in out of season is somebody's brother looking for a chair to sit on. It wants a body to keep it company till the lights come up.' Nell laughed, then didn't. She pulled the chair from the nurses' station and sat down beside him, and the dragonfly crossed the room in a slow, unhurried line and settled on the blanket above his knee.

They talked about Hollin Mere, where he had fished as a boy with a tin of worms and a borrowed rod. He described the water going gold under the reeds and the dragonflies stitching over it in July, and how one had landed on his cap and stayed for the whole length of the bridge. Nell listened. The insect did not move, though its wings shivered once when the clock struck three, and she found herself counting its breaths, as if it had any to spare.

At six the grey light came up over the car park and the hospital began to rattle awake. Mr Tindall was snoring softly. The dragonfly lifted, circled the bed once, and went out through a window that was still shut, leaving nothing on the glass. Nell wrote the observations in the book and initialled them. Later, when the porter asked whether anyone had been in the ward overnight, she said only that the old man had wanted company, and that she had given it to him.