Black linework drawing of a stylised butterfly with long swirling tendrils on white paper, shown as a tattoo design.

Stylised butterfly with flowing linework

Black and grey · Flash

A single black outline drawing of a stylised butterfly with pointed, leaf-like wings and a thin antenna. A long, looping tail of tapered lines curls down from the body and ends in fine tendrils. The design uses bold black fills on some wing and tail edges, set against plain white paper.

Butterfly Swirl Tendril Line art

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The first time the butterfly drifts down the shaft, you are the only one looking up. Your father has already gone below with his lamp, the cage has rattled off with the day shift, and you stand at the pit-head gate with flour on your hands because you were meant to be taking bread to the Ridley boys. Its wings are pointed like cut leaves, black at the edges, and its tail trails behind in long tapered threads that catch the soot and drag through the air like smoke that has decided where it wants to go.

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Mrs Garbutt says it means the seam will hold. Mr Teasdale says it means somebody will not come up. Nobody in Hollin Dene agrees on much, but they all leave their back doors open on the mornings it appears, so it can get out again. You don't believe either of them. You watch it settle on the rusted spokes of the winding wheel, fold its wings slowly, and tap one tendril against the iron as if testing for a crack.

That afternoon the klaxon sounds early. You run with the bread still in your apron pocket, and the crowd at the gate parts for you because you are a child and nobody has the heart to stop you. The cage comes up slow. Your father steps onto the boards, coughing, his lamp still lit and his cap knocked crooked, and he looks straight at you as though he has been expecting you all along.

Then the butterfly lifts from the wheel and drops back down the shaft, its tail unspooling after it into the dark, and you realise it has been riding the cage down every morning, keeping count of the men it means to bring back up.