Owl and woman profile design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil or ink line drawing of a stylised woman in profile, her hair swept into large curls and decorated with a flower and bow. An owl with detailed feather marks sits in front of her, with a rose cluster at the base. The linework is fine and uniform on a pale background, with light hatching for shading and no colour.

Neo-trad Woman Profile Owl Rose Curl Flower Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had been sitting on the Dalton Street lamppost since before the rain started, and Marjorie Quill swore it had watched her all the way from the tram stop. She kept her umbrella low and her eyes on the wet pavement, counting the iron railings the way her father had taught her to count stairs in a dark house. Nine railings, then the bakery with its shutters down, then the bell above the stationer's door that did not ring for anyone after ten.

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The ledger was in her handbag. Forty years of other people's debts, copied out in a clerk's careful hand, and tonight it had to go back into the safe at Harrow and Lyle before the morning shift came in. She had taken it home by mistake, or by design, and now the city felt too narrow to walk through without the feeling of eyes on her neck. Somewhere behind her a flower seller was closing up, tipping the last of the roses into a bucket with a hiss of water.

At the back door of the office the owl was waiting again, perched on the wrought-iron gate as if it had been posted there. Its eyes were round and unblinking, the colour of old pennies. Marjorie unlocked the safe with her left hand and her right hand stayed in her pocket, closed around the key to her own flat, which she had always meant to change.

She put the ledger back exactly where it had been and locked the door. When she turned around, the gate was empty, and on the step a single rose lay across the wet stone, its petals still closed, as if someone had decided the hour was finally hers to keep.