Black line drawing flash of an owl wearing a beaded necklace, perched above a rose and an all-seeing eye in a triangle, with a cross on the left, in a neo-traditional style; no body placement is

Owl, rose and all-seeing eye line drawing

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing of a horned owl with a beaded necklace, perched above a rose and beside a triangle containing an eye that has a drop beneath it. A cross with droplets sits on the left and the wing feathers are drawn with scale-like patterns. The linework is bold and even on a pale background, with no shading or colour, and the design fills the frame from top to bottom.

Neo-trad Owl Rose Eye Triangle Cross Bead Necklace Leaves Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had hung over the lychgate at St Ebba's for longer than anyone could account for, and by the Saturday of Dolly Marsh's wedding its beads had gone grey with pigeon grime. The florist wanted it gone before the photographs. I climbed the stepladder with a stiff brush and a bucket of warm water, expecting to be finished in ten minutes.

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The carving was cruder up close. Someone had cut a cross into the beam beside the owl, its arms ending in three-leaved flowers, and a bead of wood below it had been painted to look like a drip. Under the owl's talons a triangle was scratched into the oak with an eye at its centre and a single tear beneath the eye. A rose had been carved between the claws, its petals worn so smooth they looked like thumbprints.

I was halfway along the beads when the bride stepped out for air, her veil caught on one arm. She looked up, saw the brush in my hand, and asked me not to touch the eye. Her grandfather had carved the beam in 1921, she said, after his brother went missing on the Humber. The family had always left the eye alone, because it was meant to watch the people who came through the gate, not the ones who stayed behind. I told her I would only do the beads.

So I scrubbed the beads and left the eye. When the wedding party passed under the owl, the bridegroom stopped, looked up and laughed, and the owl went on watching with its wooden patience. Afterwards I climbed down, wiped my hands on my trousers and found the beads gleaming like wet pearls in the last of the sun, the rose still gripped in its claws, and the eye freshly cleaned and fixed on the gate as if it had something left to say.