Watercolour-style barn owl tattoo with black brush lettering reading 'It's only forever not long at all' on the forearm, surrounded by pink, purple and blue splashes.

Barn owl with lettering on an arm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A barn owl with a heart-shaped face sits at the top of the design, with its wings spreading down the left side. Black brush lettering runs diagonally across the centre, with pink, purple and blue watercolour washes and splashes framing the owl and the text. The shading is soft and blended, and the warm browns of the owl contrast with the cooler pastel splashes.

Forearm Barn owl Owl Lettering Text Splash Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Down in the parish of Thornham Parva, the miller's daughter Nell kept the barn owl that came down the chimney the winter her father died. She named it Mab, fed it mice from the granary traps, and let it watch her from the rafters with a face like a dish of milk.

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When the carrier brought word at Michaelmas that the young fisherman from Blakeney was to marry in Yarmouth, Nell asked the owl how long a year could be. Mab said nothing, being an owl, but she turned her head right round and back again, which Nell took for an answer. So she packed a basket of mice, a tin lantern and her good boots, and walked to the coast.

The north wind had teeth that autumn. For seven nights Nell stood on the sea wall calling the fishing boats in, and each night Mab came out of the dark and perched on the lantern handle. On the eighth a smack limped into the harbour with her sail in ribbons, and the fisherman stepped onto the quay with grey in his beard. He said he had been waiting on the far side of the marsh for her. Nell said it had only been a little while.

They walked home together, the owl on Nell's shoulder, and the mill wheel turned for them as if it had never stopped. Mab lived in the loft for another thirty winters. When she finally went, Nell buried her under the apple tree and told the village, as she told every child who asked, that it was only forever, and not long at all.