Small fine line black dragonfly tattoo on the inner wrist, worn alongside stacked gold chain and wooden bead bracelets.

Small dragonfly tattoo on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small dragonfly with outstretched dark wings sits on the inner wrist, drawn with fine, clean outlines and solid black ink. The tattoo is shown in close focus against pale skin, with several gold chain and wooden bead bracelets stacked around the wrist. The image is monochrome apart from the bracelets, and the tattoo sits near the centre of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Dragonfly Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook on the herring boat Maud Ellery had a rule that nobody came into the galley with wet hands, so when the dragonfly settled on the rim of the copper pot, Tom Harrow lifted the lid off the stew and waited for it to decide.

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It was late August, the harbour gone flat and brown, and the creature was as big as a man's thumb, its wings held out stiff as a pair of spread sails. Tom had been aboard eleven seasons and had never seen one on the boat. Old Jessop, who had shipped with his father, said a dragonfly in the galley meant the sea was paying a debt. Tom said that was rubbish, and Jessop said he would think about it when the nets came up empty.

The nets came up empty the next week. Then the week after, the dragonfly was still there, perched on the sugar tin, and it stayed through a gale that tore the foredeck rail away. Tom fed it crumbs of ship's biscuit soaked in tea. He did not tell the skipper. He told the dragonfly about his mother's kitchen in Whitby, where the windows were always steamed and the kettle never stopped.

On the last night of the season the boat came in heavy with herring, and the skipper bellowed for pudding. Tom went to fetch the sugar and found the tin lid off and the dragonfly gone. On the flour lay one dark wing, folded neat as a letter. He carried it up the hatch to the quay, where Jessop was counting crates, and held it out until the wind lifted it off his palm and carried it over the water. Jessop, without looking up from his count, said that was the debt settled.