Black and grey traditional owl tattoo flanked by two roses and leaves, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl and roses on upper back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large owl with detailed feathers and bold eyes sits centrally, with a rose on each side and a branch of leaves running beneath it. The linework is heavy and dark, and the feathers and petals are shaded with smooth grey gradients and fine stippled texture. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the design fills the upper back of a person wearing a pink top.

Traditional Botanical Back Owl Rose Leaves Feather Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain came down on Saltergate market for nine days running, and by the tenth the awnings sagged like wet sheets and the traders had stopped shouting their prices. Only Mags Tolley kept her rose stall open, under a tarpaulin lashed to two iron pegs. Her roses were grey that week, the same grey as the sky, and nobody stops to buy grey roses.

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On the Thursday an owl came down from the clock tower of the corn exchange and sat on the edge of her crate. It was barred brown and white, with eyes like pennies, and it did not mind the wet. A boy with a loaf under his coat stopped to stare. "It's watching you," he said. Mags told him it was watching the takings, which were nothing, and the owl turned its head right round and looked at the empty tin.

It came back the next day, and the day after. Mags began laying the least-opened rose beside it each morning, and the owl would take the stem in its talons, fly it up to the tower, and return with a feather which it left on the crate. By the second week she had a dozen feathers under the tarpaulin and a queue of customers who wanted a rose with a feather tied to the stem. Nobody could say why they sold.

When the rain finally stopped, the owl did not come down. Mags climbed the tower stairs with the last grey rose wrapped in newspaper and found the ledge lined with stems, every one of them opened and pale as milk, as if the owl had carried the weather up and kept the colour for itself. She left the rose there. The market had sun for the rest of the summer, and she never again sold a grey bloom.