Three small black butterfly tattoos in a fine line style on a person's shoulder, with a blue sky blurred in the background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three butterflies on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

Three small butterflies are tattooed on the shoulder, one at the top, one on the left and one lower on the right. The linework is thin and mostly outlined, with some dark filled areas on the wings. The ink is black and the skin is lit by bright daylight against a soft blue background.

Fine line Shoulder Butterfly Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You nearly walk straight past Dawn Pritchard in the function room of the Crown and Anchor, because she is standing still beside the raffle table, and nobody at Hollins Road Comprehensive ever stood still for long. Twenty-six years have passed since the summer the three of you drew butterflies on the back wall of the bike sheds in felt tip, one each, and swore you would never tell anyone which was whose.

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"Remember the pact?" she says, and hands you a paper plate of sausage rolls as though the question were about lunch. Lorraine is at the bar, rattling ice in a glass, already laughing at something nobody else has heard. The plan had been to meet at the reservoir on the first Saturday of every September until one of you grew old enough to be brave about it. You never did. Dawn did. Lorraine did not come.

When the lights dim for the slideshow, there is the bike shed on the big screen, grey and sagging, the felt tip faded to the colour of weak tea. Someone has dug it out for the nostalgia montage. Three butterflies still cling beneath the peeling paint: two with their wings spread wide, one folded tight as if it is still deciding whether to leave.

After the disco starts, you and Dawn slip out past the car park and walk the reservoir road with your heels in your hands. The water lies flat and tin-coloured. Dawn tears a bread roll from the buffet and scatters the crumbs along the wall, and a pair of dark wings lifts off the reeds, then another, then a third, circling close enough that you can see the lines of them. You realise you have been waiting for those wings all evening, and you are not sure whether Lorraine sent them or whether you did.