Full sleeve with owl and woman profile

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A full arm sleeve shows a woman in profile wearing a blue headband with a red rose in her hair, with an owl perched below her on the upper arm. Lower on the forearm are red roses, a blue flower, a teal vase holding a peach rose, and an umbrella set against a purple and pink wash. The bold outlines are filled with saturated colour and soft gradient shading, and the design wraps around the arm from shoulder to wrist.

Traditional Neo-trad Upper arm Forearm Woman Owl Rose Flower Umbrella Headband Profile

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had been on the fence post since before dawn, and Mother said that was a bad sign for a woman carrying a vase over the Hollin Pass. I told her owls had watched every road in the valley and none of them had ever stopped a carter. She gave me the black umbrella with the bent spoke anyway and said the rain was coming whatever the bird thought.

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The vase was teal glaze, stoppered with wax, and inside it sat a single peach rose cut from the wall behind the inn. Mr Aske had paid two shillings for it to reach his sister in Kendal, and he had said nothing about the cold. By the second bend the wind had found the gap in my collar and the road was a grey ribbon with the cloud sitting on it. I held the umbrella low, its ribs cracking like kindling, and talked to the owl because nobody else was listening.

At the cairn where the drovers leave their pebbles, the owl came down out of the sleet and landed on the stone, its eyes flat yellow and furious. It watched me unwrap the vase. The rose had not wilted. It had gone the colour of bruised apricot, its petals holding their shape like wet paper. Down the hedge the red roses were a clatter of colour in the rain, and the blue flower by the path had closed its face against the weather.

I reached Kendal before dark with the vase still stoppered and the umbrella beyond saving. Mr Aske's sister eased the rose out with her bare fingers, breathed it in and laughed, a short sound like the owl's. She asked if I had walked the pass for this, and I said nothing about the bird. Going back up in the morning I found a feather caught on the cairn, grey-brown and soft, and I tucked it into my sleeve for luck.