Flash-style drawing of a butterfly with turquoise, yellow and red wings on a white background, shown as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Turquoise and red butterfly design

Mixed · Flash

A single butterfly is drawn front on, with wings spread wide and thin antennae rising from a green and red body. The wings combine turquoise, yellow and red with soft shading and fine veining along the edges. The design sits centred on a plain white background with generous space around it.

Butterfly Wing Antennae Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dyer's daughter had run out of blue a fortnight before the king's wedding, and so the moths of Ysel came to her at dusk, one after another, and asked to be painted. She was twelve and had no patience for them. She told them the vats were cold and the lichen was dear. Still they settled on her sill and waited with their wings folded like letters.

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Her mother had dyed the royal banners the colour of the lake at Ferrow, a green-blue that cost a whole season's wool. Now the lake had gone grey and the mother lay abed coughing like sleet on a shutter. So the girl mixed what she had: crushed bramble for red, marigold for yellow, and the last of the lake water, kept in a stoppered jar since spring.

She began with the body, where the red ran down like rust, then the yellow band, then the turquoise spreading to the edges, where she drew each vein with a hair from her own head. When the moth was finished it lifted off the sill and sailed over the roofs toward the palace, growing smaller until the bell rang for the wedding.

The next morning every banner in the square was painted with moths, wings spread wide, antennae fine as wire. The king demanded to know who had done it. The girl came up the steps with paint on her knuckles and said she had only done what she was asked. The queen touched the cloth and said, "Your mother's blue," and the girl said, "It was the lake's blue, ma'am. I only borrowed it." The moths were already going home across the water.