Ornate owl perched on a branch

Mixed · Flash

A front-facing owl sits on a branch with large, detailed eyes and intricate patterned linework across its face and wings. A dotted arc sits above its head and a small leafy twig extends to the right. Black ink dominates, with purple and yellow watercolour washes behind the branch and eyes.

Owl Branch Leaves Watercolour Ink

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl came to the wedding at Hollin Farm uninvited, which the villagers took as a sign it meant to stay. It sat on the bough above the yard gate with its feathers fluffed against the drizzle, two pale moons for eyes with yellow at their hearts, and it watched the dancing without once blinking. Old Mother Greave said an owl at a wedding was a witness, and a witness must be given a seat.

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So they set a dish of barley bread and cold mutton on the gatepost. Tobias Lark, who had courted the miller's daughter Ysolde for three summers, slipped out to the hedge with a leather ledger under his coat. He had kept two sets of accounts for the mill, one for the miller and one for himself, and he meant to burn the honest one before the vows. He pushed the ledger deep into the brambles and turned back toward the lamplight, never once looking up.

The owl looked. It dropped from the branch without a sound, took the ledger from the hedge in its talons, and rose over the wet fields toward the marsh. Tobias stood in the lane with his hands open and nothing in them. By the time he came back through the gate, Ysolde had already heard the whole matter from Mother Greave, who had watched it all from the cart.

Ysolde did not stop the fiddler or ask for the ledger back. She looked her intended over the way her father looked over a sack of grain, then said the owl would keep the accounts until spring, and she would be the one to ask for them. "Then we shall see," she said, "whether your tally balances." The dancing went on until dawn, and the owl was never seen on the bough again.