Colour tattoo of a unicorn head with a flowing golden mane, a green and orange horn and a small butterfly, on an upper arm.

Unicorn head and butterfly on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A unicorn head faces left with a long spiralled horn that shifts from pink to green, a flowing golden-orange mane and a teal-shaded face. A small yellow and green butterfly sits near the muzzle, and a red ribbon curls behind the horn. The bright colour is applied with soft, blended shading across the whole design, which fills the upper arm.

Upper arm Unicorn Horn Mane Butterfly Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fiddler had played the same reel three times over before the white horse came up the lane, and nobody at the hall stopped dancing to look at it. It stepped in through the open door with a red ribbon knotted behind its horn. The horn was spiralled, pink at the root and green at the point, like a sugared twist pulled out in the sun. Its mane was the colour of barley in August and moved as though there were wind inside the room.

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Nell Harker saw it first, because she was the only one not dancing. She had a yellow and green butterfly resting on her sleeve, and when the horse came near, the butterfly lifted off and settled on the soft place below its nostril, as if it had been sent for. The horse lowered its head to her. It smelt of clover and rain on slate, and it asked, without a sound, whether she would dance.

She said she had two left feet and a mother who would box her ears. The horse only waited. So she took her shawl off the peg and danced with it in the middle of the boards, slowly at first, then faster when the fiddler found his time again. Each step she took, the ribbon lifted and fell. When the reel ended the horse was gone, and the door stood open on an orchard where the apple trees had blossomed out of season.

Nell kept the ribbon in a tin with the buttons. The butterfly never left her sleeve, though she tried to shake it off on the walk home. Her mother said the horse only ever asks the one who is sitting by the wall, and that a thing which asks politely is owed the dance. Nell never married. Each March, when the orchard came into blossom, she could hear a fiddle playing under the ground.