Colour tattoo of a cartoon owl with purple feathers, pink eyes and teal wings perched on a wooden log, on the forearm.

Cartoon owl perched on a log

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon owl with purple plumage, large pink-rimmed eyes, a yellow beak and teal wings sits on a brown wooden log. The bold black outlines and smooth colour shading give it a playful, illustrative look. The owl fills the centre of the frame against a light skin background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down under the awning, and mind the puddle by your left boot, for that one has swallowed better men than you. Rain like this always brings out Old Mirabel, the owl who has perched on the chopping log at the back of Saltgate market since before the bakery had a roof. Her feathers are the purple of a bruise going off, and her eyes are rimmed in pink, as if she has been crying over the price of onions for forty winters.

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Nobody in Saltgate ever bothered her. Traders shouted over her head, pigeons begged at her feet, and the rain ran off her like off a slate. She did not mind. An owl that stares long enough sees everything, and Mirabel stared at every stall in that market. She saw young Tobias Crane counting his pennies twice, and she saw the fishwife's dog slink out from under the tarpaulin with a whole kipper in its mouth.

Then came the Thursday the cheesemonger's ledger went missing. He searched his cart, his boots and his sister's basket, and he blamed the travelling fiddler, which was unkind and also wrong. Mirabel watched the water drip off the brim of his hat and off the tip of her own beak, and she waited. Nobody thought to ask the log. When the thief crept back to the cart at dusk, two wet pink-rimmed eyes glowed at him from the wood, and he dropped the ledger in the nearest puddle and ran.

They say she is still there on the log, though the market has moved twice since. If you buy a pear from the cart by the drain, count your change slowly, and look up. She will be watching.

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