Colour tattoo of a round-eyed owl perched on a branch with a hanging locket, on the outer thigh, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl on a branch with a pendant on the thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

A pink and purple owl with large white-highlighted eyes sits on a brown branch with green leaves, and a chain hangs from the branch holding an engraved oval locket. The linework is bold and dark, with smooth shading on the owl's feathers and branch. Bright pink, purple, teal and brown dominate the composition, which is centred on the thigh.

Neo-trad Thigh Owl Branch Pendant Leaves Chain Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair had packed up by Tuesday, all but the owl. It sat on the dead oak at the edge of Coldharbour Common with a silver locket swinging from its branch, and nobody in the family would go near it. Old Mrs Penhallow, who had run the coconut shy for thirty years, said the bird was keeping watch for Madame Ysolde, who had left in the night and taken her caravan but not her necklace. So when the boy Tom dared himself up the trunk with a bag of cold chips, she only shook her head and said mind the chain.

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Tom reached the lowest limb and found the locket hung on a chain that looped twice around the wood and under the owl's yellow talons. The bird did not blink. Its big white-starred eyes followed his hand the whole way. He worked the clasp open with his thumbnail, and inside, instead of a photograph or a lock of hair, there was a folded slip of paper and a pressed green leaf. The paper said only: returned when it is asked for, not before.

His gran had told him the old rule. Whatever the owl kept would go back to whoever was owed it, but the owl would only let go once someone climbed up and asked for it by name. Tom did not know whose name to say. He thought of the girl who had sold him the chips, and then of the fortune teller, and then, because his mouth was dry, he said Madame Ysolde out loud.

The chain rattled. Across the common, the caravan lights flickered on one by one, as if someone had been waiting. Tom climbed down with the locket warm in his fist, and when he looked back the owl had turned its head all the way round to watch him go, as owls do, and the branch was bare.