Black and grey tattoo of a fairy with butterfly wings and swirling tendrils on the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged fairy tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A fairy figure with long hair sits at the lower left of a large pair of butterfly wings, which are outlined in black and shaded in grey. Black swirling tendrils extend upward and outward from the wings, framing the design. The tattoo is photographed from behind on a person's upper back, with soft lighting and a plain background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth found the fairy in the pocket of a fox-fur coat handed in at the cloakroom just after the last waltz. She was no bigger than a teaspoon, with hair spilling past her shoulders like wet ink, and she sat very still among the loose pins and a torn ticket stub, her wings folded flat as pressed tissue.

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'Don't tip me into the bin,' she said, her voice thin as a whistle through a keyhole. 'I've been dancing since the Armistice dance, and the cigarette smoke has greyed my wings.'

Ruth had worked the Gull Pier ballroom for six winters and had seen stranger things come out of coat pockets, but nothing that talked back. She tucked the fairy into a glove box lined with cotton wool, and between hanging up mackintoshes she listened to the band through the wall. Mr Harrow's quartet was playing 'Clair de Lune' for the third time that night, and every time the strings swelled, the box hummed.

At closing, when the lights were dimmed and the sea lay black beyond the rail, Ruth carried the box to the end of the pier. Mist curled off the water in long grey tendrils, and the fairy climbed onto the rail and shook out her wings. They opened slowly, black-edged and shaded like the underside of a cloud. She stepped into the spray, turned once, and was gone over the water, leaving a faint silver dust on Ruth's palm while, behind her, the band played on to an empty floor.