Black ink flash drawing of a symmetrical mandala-style owl with dotwork detail, lotus motifs and hanging teardrop chains, set over a teal and purple geometric background.

Mandala owl design with teardrop drops

Geometric · Mixed · Flash

A symmetrical owl with wide, detailed eyes sits at the centre, its face and wings built from ornamental patterns of scales, petals and fine dotted lines. Strings of beads and teardrop pendants hang from its base, with lotus-like flourishes at the sides and a mandala crown above. The linework is solid black ink on white paper, while the background is shaded in teal to purple coloured pencil in a triangular geometric pattern.

Geometric Dotwork Owl Mandala Lotus Teardrop Bead Feather Dot Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

There was a walled garden behind the big house at Coldharbour, and in it a pond of white lotus that the gardeners were forbidden to weed. Over the water sat an owl with eyes as wide as saucers and a face cut into patterns of scales and petals, the way a thatcher cuts a ridge. It never moved by daylight. At night it came down to the pond, and the dew hung from the lotus leaves in strings of beads, and the owl counted them, one bead to a year.

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The gardener's girl, Nell Tully, was twelve and clever and did not believe a word of it. One night in late summer she climbed the wall with a lantern and sat at the pond's edge. She asked the owl what it counted for. The owl turned its head all the way round and said, 'For the ones who forgot to come back, and the ones who never went.' Then it lifted one wing and pointed with a feather at the drops hanging from the lowest leaf. Each drop held a small reflection: a chimney, a green door, a boy she half knew who had gone to sea with her uncle.

Nell asked how she might bring him home. The owl said counting never brought anyone back. She had to take one drop, carry it up the lane in her mouth, and not let it fall. She managed three steps before the drop split on her tongue and tasted of rain on slate. She ran the rest of the way with her cheeks full of it, and when she reached the gate of the kitchen garden the door stood open, and a wet figure was dripping on the flags with salt in his hair, grinning as if he had only been away for the afternoon.