Colour neo-traditional tattoo of an owl perched on a branch before an orange sun, with orange flowers and yellow leaves, on the upper arm.

Owl with sun and flowers on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large owl with feathered ear tufts, yellow beak and talons perches on a branch in front of an orange sun. Orange flowers with yellow centres and yellow leaves frame the lower half of the design. Bold black outlines define the feathers and the shading uses soft gradients in orange, brown and grey on a dark background.

Neo-trad Upper arm Owl Sun Flower Leaves Branch Feather Talon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had claimed the old Bramley bough before the first windfalls hit the grass, and by the last week of August you had stopped pretending it was just passing through. It sat there each evening, feathered ear tufts raised as if it were listening for the pickers to go home, its yellow talons locked round the wood as though the branch had been its own idea. Behind it the sun went down the colour of marmalade, and the roses along the wall flared up to match.

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Maud, who had run the orchard since her husband's funeral and never once mentioned him, said the owl was owed. Every crate that came in from the north field had mice in it the year before, she said, and the owl had cleared them, and nobody had ever thanked it. So when the wasps got into the sorting shed and the bruised fruit began to rot, you climbed the ladder with a sack and a pair of secateurs, meaning to clear the bough for the late pickers. The owl did not move. It only turned its head slowly, round and round, until you were the one who wanted to look away.

You came down with the sack still empty. Maud asked what it had said, and you told her it had said nothing, which was true and also the least of it. That evening you left a single Bramley on the bough, bright as a lamp, and walked home along the wall with the last of the sun warm on your neck.

In the morning the apple was gone and the bough was bare. In the grass beneath, pressed flat into the dew, lay one feather, orange at the tip and grey at the root. Maud picked it up and tucked it into the pocket of her apron without a word, as though she had been expecting it for years.