Colour neo-traditional sleeve tattoo on an upper arm showing two barn owls, pink flowers and leaves.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Barn owls and pink flowers on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with two barn owls, one above the other, with pale faces, heart-shaped facial discs and detailed feathers. Shading uses fine dots and soft grey gradients, with orange and brown tones on the feathers and pink flowers with green leaves filling the gaps around the owls. The composition wraps around the arm, with the owls facing forward and the flowers and foliage framing the edges.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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You'll have heard by now that the barn roof held, though only just. Dad's old hay shed at Wexcombe was never meant for a wedding, and yet there were forty of us under its beams on Saturday, with jam jars of wild roses along the trestles and the doors pushed wide to the orchard. The owls turned up before the speeches. Two of them, pale as dinner plates, sat in the rafters above the top table and looked down at Nell's new husband as if he owed them rent.

Nobody minded. Mags, who has kept hens since before the war, said barn owls only nest where nobody fusses them, and that they'll stay as long as the mice do. She was right about the mice. Halfway through the dancing, the smaller owl dropped from the beam without a sound, took something from under the hay bales, and climbed back up with it, and the fiddler didn't even miss a note.

At the end of the night, when the lanterns were going out one by one, I went out to fetch the cake knife from the car and found the pair of them on the gatepost, side by side, their heart-shaped faces turned towards the barn where the lights were still on. I stood there longer than I should have. They didn't leave until I did, and in the morning there was a single pink petal from the hedge stuck to the wood where they'd been sitting.

Ring me when you're back from the coast. Nell wants the photos, and I want to hear what you made of the owls.

Love, Aunt Frances

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