Black ink drawing of an owl in flight with intricate patterned feathers, shown as a blackwork tattoo design on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornamental owl in flight

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A stylised owl with wings spread in mid-flight, facing left with a round, detailed face and large eyes. The feathers are filled with fine hatching, dotted lines, scales and geometric patterns in black ink on white. The image is a single centred design with no colour and no background detail.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, the owl came back last night, through the gap above the bin chute where the roof sheeting has never sat flush. Mrs Okafor on eleven says it is a tawny that got lost coming off the reservoir fields, but I have seen it twice now and no tawny I know of wears the scales you used to draw on the backs of my school jotters. Its wings are banded like the hatching on your old compass charts, every feather cut into little diamonds and lines.

Keep reading

The lift has been out since March, so I climb the stairs with the shopping and count the landings the way Dad counted fence posts. Eight, nine, ten. On the tenth the window has a crack shaped like a flight path, and the owl sits on the rail there with its round face turned towards me, grave, as if it is checking my work. Last Thursday I left the window open a hand's width, and in the morning there was a single feather on the sill, striped black and white, with a dotted edge like a row of stitches.

I know what you will say. You will say I am a sentimental fool and that owls do not read letters. Maybe not. But I took the feather to the council office on Monday, and the clerk held it up to the light for a long while before saying the repairs list had been waiting since 2019 for someone to look up at the roof. So I have filled in the form in capitals and put the feather in this envelope, so you can see for yourself what has been coming through the gap.

Come home at Easter. Bring the compass charts. I think the owl would like to see them.

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