Pencil sketch of a perched owl wearing a top hat and monocle, a black and grey design with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl in top hat and monocle sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a perched owl wearing a top hat and a monocle on a chain. The feathers are built up with layered shading and fine hatched strokes, with the darkest tones on the hat and wings. The greyscale owl is centred on a plain pale background and fills most of the frame.

Owl Top hat Monocle Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My dear Harriet, you will be pleased to hear the Pemberton bank has not yet foreclosed on the dovecote, though it has made a rather pointed remark about the roof. I have taken my lunch on the battlements every afternoon this week, as you advised, and I can report that the owl who keeps the north tower has taken a considerable interest in my affairs. He arrived on Monday, perched himself on the broken merlon above the portcullis, and has not once stopped staring at me with that expression of profound disappointment one normally reserves for a second cousin's wedding speech.

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I bought him a top hat from the Saturday market in Ludlow, a sad velvet thing with a tear at the brim, and fixed it on his head with two hairpins and a good deal of hope. He accepted it without comment. The monocle was my own, the one my father wore to the Lords, and it hangs on a chain I have been unable to untangle since Tuesday. Mrs Gorringe at the lodge says the owl is a bad omen. I told her a bad omen would at least have the decency to wear a hat.

Yesterday I finally asked him what he wanted from me. He turned his head very slowly, the way a magistrate does before pronouncing sentence, and I swear he gave me a look that said the question was naive. Then he unfolded one wing, took the monocle up in his mind's eye, and polished it with a single grey feather. I have no idea how a bird manages that, but the glass was perfectly clear when he finished, and I could see the ruin through it for the first time in months, every crack and ivy tendril sharp and forgiving.

So I have decided to keep the castle after all. Come up at the weekend and bring the good brandy. The owl will want to inspect you, and I should warn you he is never wrong about people.

Yours in hopeful ruin, Edmund