Black line drawing of a symmetrical butterfly with intricate cogs, clock-like gears and swirling filigree across its wings, shown as a tattoo design with no body part visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Steampunk gear butterfly line design

Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical butterfly drawn in black outline, with its wings filled with interlocking cogs, clock-style gears and small circles. Swirling scrolls and tendrils extend from the wing edges and antennae, and the body is a segmented column with a central gear. The image is a flat monochrome design on a white background, with even line weight and no shading.

Butterfly Gear Cog Clock Swirl Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The winch on the Margaret Ann seized again off the Dogger on Tuesday, and I spent the whole night with my arm inside its drum while the boat rolled and the nets came up empty. You'll laugh, but I thought of your father's cuckoo clock, the way he'd lay out every wheel on the kitchen table before putting a single one back. I did the same on an oilcloth on the foredeck, with the spray hitting the lamp and my knuckles going numb.

Skipper Dunn says the gear is older than the hull. Every tooth is hand-cut brass, and somebody a century ago decided a winch should have the patience of a clock. I found a small pinion with a hairline crack, no bigger than a fingernail paring, and I had to file a replacement from a spoon handle because the chandler in Kellmouth wouldn't open till Friday. It held. The nets came in heavy with hake and one sulking conger that Dunn wanted thrown back and I wouldn't let him.

Here is the thing I keep turning over. When the drum finally turned under my palm, the whole deck seemed to tick along with it, every bolt and rivet in step, like a flock of small wings lifting at once. I swear the grey sea rose and fell to the same beat. I'm not saying it's magic. I'm saying a machine that works is a kind of wonder, and I'd forgotten.

Send me the fine file set from the bottom drawer, and tell Mum I'm eating. The spare cogs are still in my coat pocket, the oil on my fingers, and I'll be home for the Christmas herring if the weather holds.

Yours, Tom