Teal and pink butterfly tattoo with black outlines and dark antennae, shown on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Teal and pink butterfly on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A butterfly with symmetrical, stylised wings sits centrally on the skin, with a black body and curled antennae at the top. The wings are shaded in turquoise and teal with pink and magenta highlights, and bold black outlines define each wing shape. The design fills the frame against a plain background of skin.

Forearm Butterfly Wing Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Tamsin Roe had mended nets on the east quay for forty years, and she knew the sea did not give things back. So when the blue butterfly came up out of the fog at the turn of the tide, settling on the tarred rope she was splicing, she did not reach for it. She only watched its wings open and close, teal as the shallows over the sand, with a bloom of pink at the edges like the inside of a shell.

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The harbour men said it was a sea-moth from the drowned village past the point, where the church bell still rang in bad weather. Her husband Joss had gone out beyond that point in March and not come back, and the boat had come home without him. Every morning since, she had mended the net with her hands and her mouth shut, and nobody on the quay asked her anything.

The butterfly followed her up the steps to the chandler's, lifted off the rail, and landed on the cuff of her coat. Its black body was no thicker than a tallow wick. Its antennae curled like the ends of a fishing hook, and when it turned its wings the pink flared the way Joss's cheeks used to when he laughed at his own jokes.

She went down to the water that evening with her hands empty. She did not call him. She simply told the tide what the chandler had said about the price of tar, and what the gulls had done to the bait. The butterfly sat on her wrist while she talked, and when the light went it lifted and flew out over the grey water toward the point, bright as a lure, until the dark took it.