Realism tattoo of a brown owl with orange eyes above a clock face with Roman numerals on a forearm, with the word Wisdom and red hexagons above.

Owl and clock on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a detailed owl with orange eyes, set above a pocket watch with Roman numerals and its hands visible. The owl and clock are shaded in black and grey with smooth gradients, while the orange eyes and red hexagons and red brushed stroke add colour. The word Wisdom sits between the owl and the red hexagons on a dark background.

Realism Forearm Owl Clock Pocket watch Roman numeral Hexagon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the lamp's burning the last of the paraffin and I'd rather you saw my face than my hands. Mind the bucket. That's for the leak, not the lions. We've no lions any more, only the memory of a roar on Mr Pell's old gramophone.

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Gideon was the owl, and he was the only one of us who never once lost his temper. Abel Tennant kept the great watch that had belonged to his father, a silver thing with Roman numerals worn soft as bread crust, and it stopped at ten to three the night the big top came down in Carlisle. Nobody could wind it back. Gideon liked to sit on the lid of that case in the wagon, orange eyes narrowed at anyone who came in too loud, and he'd turn his head slowly to watch the hands that would not move.

The little ones called him Wisdom, after the word painted in curly gold across the caravan door, though half the letters had flaked off by the time the money ran out. Wisdom, Gideon would say, was only knowing when a thing had finished. The owl knew. Every evening he'd tip his head at the dead watch as if it had said something rude.

So when the girl came, the one who sold tickets to nobody and sang to the horses, she wound the watch with her thumb until it ticked. Gideon blinked once, slow as a funeral. Then the hands leapt forward, nine minutes at a go, straight through the night, and the whole field went quiet to listen. Morning came early that year. We were all of us grateful for it.