Black and grey flash design of an owl with spread wings holding crossed pistols, flanked by skulls, dice and playing cards.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owl with crossed pistols and skulls

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A front-facing owl with wings fully spread sits at the centre, gripping two crossed pistols with its talons. Skulls, dice, playing cards and a hand making a rock gesture fill the lower sides of the composition. The design uses fine, detailed linework and smooth grey shading on the feathers and face, set on a plain white background.

Realism Owl Wing Pistol Skull Dice Playing card Hand Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hollis Quaid dealt the last hand on an upturned apple crate while the pickers' lamps wandered down the far rows like slow fireflies. The owl on the gatepost behind him had watched every hand since midsummer, and nobody had thought to shoo it off, not even when Eddowes started wagering the orchard's Bramleys against a jar of plum jam.

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Eddowes had two pistols in his coat, old things his father had left him, and he slapped them down beside the dice as if they were just another stake. The dice were bone, worn smooth by somebody's thumb, and they rolled out of the dust with a sound like a cough. Mae Ashdown, who had picked this orchard for eleven seasons, watched the numbers and said nothing, which was how she won most things.

Quaid took the pot on a pair of sevens, and the pistols with it, which he had not wanted. He broke them open and tipped the chambers into his palm, finding nothing but the smell of gun oil. Then the owl came down off the gatepost in one soft drop, lifted a card from the crate in its talons, and rose into the dark above the trees, where the stars were thick and unbothered.

In the morning the crate was full of Bramleys, stacked neat as a bet nobody remembered placing. Eddowes swore he had never lost a thing in his life, and Quaid let him believe it. The owl was back on the post with the ace of spades pinned under one foot, looking at him as though it had kept the better half of the deal.