Black ink drawing of a cartoon owl with yellow beak and talons, perched beside a small bird on a branch, in a flash-style design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cartoon owl and small bird on a branch

Mixed · Flash

A cartoon owl with large round yellow eyes sits on a branch, with a smaller bird with a yellow beak beside it at its lower left. The owl is drawn in bold black linework with feathered hatching and white fill, and the beaks and talons are picked out in yellow. The composition is a centred, simple vignette with plenty of white space around the two birds.

Owl Bird Branch Cartoon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Brother Anselm, you will be relieved to learn that the owl has not, after all, eaten the ink. She has merely moved it. Yesterday I found the lid of the good vermilion pot sitting on the highest beam of the scriptorium, placed with great care beside the nest of straw she has built in the rafters, as though she were storing it up for winter.

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The little one, the speckled wren we call Tobias, has been less discreet. He spent the whole of Vespers perched on the rim of my inkwell, peering down at the page with his yellow beak open, while I tried to finish the capital O of the Gospel of John. Every time I dipped my quill he hopped a little closer, until the O came out looking like a cracked egg. Brother Cuthbert says it is a miracle the Lord has sent us a second copyist. I say the Lord has sent us a thief with ambitions.

Tonight the owl came down from her beam, wings spread like a cloak, and settled on the branch-shaped perch Brother Oswy fixed to the window for the swallows. Tobias hopped up beside her, and together they sat looking at the blank vellum I had left under the lamp. Neither of them touched it. They simply looked, the way the abbot looks at a sermon he has not yet written.

I have decided to let them keep the scriptorium. The Office bell rings at five, and I suspect the owl will take the first hour's work, as she has taken everything else. Pray for me, and pray for the vermilion. Your brother in Christ, Felix.