Shaded owl tattoo on a curling branch with leaves and vines, on the side of a person's lower abdomen above low-rise jeans.

Owl on a branch with vines

Botanical · Other · Mixed · Photo

A shaded owl perches on a curling branch with leaves, and a vine scrolls up beside it. The linework is dark and the feathers are shaded in grey with muted pink and brown tones. The tattoo sits on bare skin above low-rise jeans against a dark background.

Botanical Other Owl Branch Vine Leaves Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl refuses the mouse again, turning her head a quarter circle to show you the back of her skull, as if the mouse has said something unforgivable. You set the bowl on the caravan step and tell her that nobody in Lincolnshire pays good money to watch a bird starve to make a point. Behind you the big top sags over the empty field like a wet sheet, its striped sides gone the colour of weak tea.

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Harrow's Travelling Marvels used to fill three towns a week. Now there is you, Dougie, who juggles only when sober, and Mrs Tibbs, named by a girl who has since married a dentist and moved to Leeds. Her act was simple: she rode the painted branch on the back curtain while you swung the spotlight, and the crowd gasped as though a real tree had grown out of the canvas. Nobody gasps at canvas anymore.

On the last Thursday of October the generator coughs and dies, and in the dark you hear wings. Mrs Tibbs lands on your shoulder, weight as light as a folded glove, and her claws find the same places they always find. You carry her to the back of the tent where the painted branch hangs, its vines curling up the faded cloth, leaves flaking like old pastry.

You don't say goodbye. You lift her to the painted bough and she grips the wood the way she gripped your sleeve the night you found her, a fledgling in a feed sack behind the fairground. She settles, folds her wings and becomes just another picture. In the morning Dougie finds you asleep in the sawdust and asks where the owl went. You point at the curtain and say she's gone on ahead, which is true enough for a show that is closing.