Black and grey traditional style tattoo of an owl with roses and leaves on the outer thigh, with a hand with dark nails resting beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and roses on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo covers the outer thigh, showing an owl with detailed feather shading and wings, set among roses, rosebuds and leafy branches. The linework is bold and the shading uses solid black with grey tones for the feathers and petals. The black and white photograph is taken close up, with a hand with dark painted nails resting on the rose at the left edge of the frame.

Traditional Thigh Owl Rose Leaves Bud Feather Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The owl came back to the harbour wall the week after your boat went out, sitting in the old climbing rose like it had paid the rent. Mam says it is the same bird that used to sit on the chapel roof, but she says that about everything with wings. I have been leaving it the heads from the gurnards, which I know is daft, but Dad always said you feed what keeps watch.

The roses have gone wild since nobody cut them. Buds the colour of tallow are opening along the wall, and the leaves have that dark, waxy look they get before a blow. Every evening the owl sits on the top branch and turns its face to the water, round as a pocket watch, and waits for the lights of the fleet to show past the Carr. I sit on the step with a bucket of mending twine and count the boats in, the way you showed me, and I count you last because you are always last.

Last night it lifted off the wall just as the Maggie Rose rounded the point, and I thought, well, that is your answer, the bird is leaving because you are home. Then I saw the sail was the wrong sail, only Harry Coull's brother, and the owl had gone to the far end of the yard to sit on the drying nets instead, where nothing could see it but me.

I have not told Mam about the nets. Come in on Thursday's tide if the weather allows, and bring the good knife. There is a branch down by the boathouse I want you to see before the rain takes the last of the blooms.

Love, Nell