Traditional style owl tattoo perched on a pocket watch on a forearm, with a red rose beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl perched on a pocket watch

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large owl with yellow eyes and brown, blue and red plumage sits on top of an open pocket watch with numerals on its face. The owl is shaded with bold outlines, and a red rose and a black scrollwork swirl sit to the right. The watch is largely black linework on pale skin, while the owl and rose carry the main colour.

Traditional Forearm Owl Pocket watch Rose Clock Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had been told twice by the ringmaster that the owl was not for sale, so she sat on the cold step of the wagon and watched it instead. Its name was Mr Gilling, and it had perched on the rail above the big top since the spring the elephant died, turning its head at every bell like a clerk who had heard the wages were late. Beneath the wagon's painted rose, the paint had flaked away to the grain, but the owl still looked as if it expected a crowd.

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The watch belonged to the ringmaster's father, a silver hunter with a cracked crystal, and it had stopped at ten past four on the morning the first canvas came down in Boston Spa. Nobody had wound it since. Mr Gilling had taken to roosting on its open case each night, claws curled over the hinge, as though he meant to keep the hands from moving on without the company.

On the last night of the season in Scunthorpe, Nell lifted the lid and found a folded bill of fare tucked under the movement, the old programme with the trick list printed in purple ink. She read the first line aloud. The owl blinked, shuffled along the case, and the minute hand gave one tremble and went round.

By the time the lamps were out, the ringmaster was counting coins on the tailboard, and Nell was already walking the road toward the station with the watch in her coat pocket. Behind her, the owl stayed on the rail, and for once it did not follow.