Black and grey owl tattoo with dreamcatcher-style eyes on the side of the ribs, with a line of script above it.

Owl with dreamcatcher eyes on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey owl sits on the side of the torso, with its eyes formed from circular dreamcatcher webs and its body made of layered feathers that taper into fringed points. Shading is soft and greyscale, with dark outlines and fine detail in the feathers and web patterns. A partial line of cursive script runs across the upper part of the frame, and the wearer's pink lace underwear is visible below the tattoo.

Ribs Owl Dreamcatcher Feather Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margaret Hewitt had counted the owls on the pit road for three winters, and there were never more than two. The big grey one lived in the dead elm behind the chapel, and the smaller one came down from the spoil heap only when the wind was in the west and the cage was late. Tonight the wind had swung round and the cage had not come up at all.

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Her son Tommy was on the night shift at the Lady Ann, and the night shift had been sent down an hour ago by a deputy who wanted the seam finished before the pay clerk left. Margaret sat on the step with her shawl over her knees and a cup of tea gone cold beside her. Out past the washhouse the owl lifted from the fence post, wings wide, and the feathers at its edges frayed into points like the fringe on a shawl. It turned its head once toward her, and its eyes were round nets of thread, the kind her mother had hung above the cradle to catch what came in the dark.

She had hung one above Tommy's cot in 1931, and it had caught nothing but the draught from the door. Her mother always said a dreamcatcher only worked if you believed the bad things would stick, and Margaret had never believed anything of the kind. Still, she got up, went inside, and lifted the old hoop down from the hook. She carried it to the back door and hung it on the nail, where the moon could reach the web.

When the siren finally sounded at half past four, it was thin and far off. Tommy came up the lane with his lamp swinging and soot on his neck, and the owl was sitting on the chapel roof above him, watching him come home.