Black and grey neo-traditional tattoo of an owl holding a heart-shaped padlock and key, with a rose below, on an upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl, key and rose on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo of an owl with wide eyes stands on the upper arm, holding a heart-shaped padlock and a key in its talons. A rose sits below the owl and a leaf rises above its head, all drawn with fine linework and soft grey shading. The photograph is black and white, with a woman's shoulder and a partial view of a loose white top in the frame.

Neo-trad Upper arm Shoulder Owl Key Padlock Heart Rose Leaf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp-room key had gone missing again by the time the cage stopped rattling at the top of the shaft, and Nell Morgan stood with her palm open while the night shift jostled past her for their brass checks. Forty men, and not one of them would wait while she turned out the drawers. "Owl's had it," said Tom Lewis, the lodge boy, pulling his cap down. "Saw it go up into the headframe like a cat with a mouse."

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Nell did not laugh. The barn owl had roosted in the winding gear since the spring, a pale thing with black eyes that watched the men come and go as if it kept the tally itself. Her Idris had cut the rose on the lid of the cabinet before the pit took him, and he had bought the heart-shaped padlock from a fair in Merthyr for a shilling, swearing it would outlast the colliery. It had. It was the key that never stayed where it was put. She climbed the iron rungs in her borrowed boots, the wind off the tips tugging at her shawl, and found the key wedged on a beam beside a single green leaf the bird had brought in from somewhere up the valley.

She brought it down in her fist and kept it there through the lamp-issue, handing out flames behind the wire gauze one at a time. When the last man had gone to the cage, Tom was still hanging about by the door, cheeks red from the cold. "You can have the key," she told him, "if you promise to bring the owl its supper." He grinned and ran off. Nell turned the lock slowly, the heart folding open, and left it hanging loose on the cabinet, where the next shift would find it waiting.