Black and grey drawing of a shaded skull with feathered wings, butterflies and a compass, sketched on tracing paper beside a pen.

Winged skull with butterflies design

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed drawing of a human skull with a compass on its brow, set within a dotted circular frame. Large feathered wings spread out on both sides, and several butterflies overlap the frame. The skull and wings are shaded in soft grey tones with fine black linework, on pale translucent paper with a pen lying at the left edge.

Realism Skull Wing Feather Butterfly Compass Frame Dotwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Grandad's compass had sat on the shelf above the proving drawer for as long as I could remember, its needle pinned to the bread bin, which he said was the only true north a baker needed. I was in at half three that Tuesday, the way I always am, scraping rye off the bench, when I noticed the brass needle had swung round to the back door and was trembling there like it had heard someone knock.

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Nobody knocked. The sign above the shop still shows the skull he painted the summer he opened, wings spread across the fascia, moths and butterflies tangled in a ring of dots like a string of pinpricks. Nan used to say the moths came for the oven light and the skull came for the custard creams, and the wings were only there so the whole business could get off the ground. Grandad would laugh every time, then go back to his scoring.

I unbolted the door anyway. The alley was grey as dishwater and empty, except for a tray on the step, loaves wrapped in a tea towel and still warm enough to fog the cold. Tucked under the cloth was a slip of paper in his careful capitals: THE LIGHT IS NOT FOR THE MOTHS. PAY WHAT YOU OWE THE DAWN. My hands shook so badly I dropped it into the flour.

He had been in the ground since March, and I had watched the compass go in with him. I put the kettle on, tapped the glass until the needle swung back to the bread bin, and set the loaves on the rack. When the first van pulled up at six, the moths were already at the window, pressed against the glass as if they wanted in, and I let them in.