Black tribal-style butterfly design with flame-like wings and a coiled figure down the centre, shown on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal flame butterfly design

Black and grey · Flash

A black line-art design of a butterfly with large, flame-like tribal wings, each with curling tips and inner outlines. A central figure, which appears to be a human form wrapped in a serpent-like coil, runs down the middle of the body. The image uses solid black fills and thin white highlights on a plain white background, with the design centred and symmetrical.

Butterfly Flame Tribal Figure Snake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cake was still in the cool box when the bonfire took the hedge, so we all stood in the lane in our good shoes and watched the sparks climb. Uncle Dennis said it was the wind off the moor, and Aunt Ruth said it was the moths, and nobody argued with Ruth at a wedding.

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She told the story again while the best man beat the flames back with a wet coat. There was a girl, she said, who sat too near the fire every night because it was the only warm thing in the valley. A grass snake came out of the reeds and wound itself round her ankles to pull her back from the edge, and she let it, because nobody had ever held on to her that tightly before. The fire was jealous. It sent its sparks up as moths, and the moths carried the snake's coil into the sky and wore it as the black lace of their wings.

I didn't believe a word, but I liked the way Ruth's hands moved when she talked, drawing the shape in the air with her fingers, the loops and the curled tips. The bride laughed and wiped her eyes with the back of her glove. The groom had both arms round her from behind, his chin on her shoulder, and neither of them looked at the burning hedge at all.

When the fire brigade finally rolled up the lane, the marquee was still standing and the cake was still cold. Ruth found me by the gate, pressed a single charred leaf into my palm and said the moths always come back for whoever stayed. I put it in my pocket with the order of service, and it is still there.