Pencil drawing of three owls perched on a branch above the words Nobody's Perfect in ornate block lettering, with a fourth owl hanging upside down, drawn on wood-grain paper.

Owls on a branch with Nobody's Perfect lettering

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing shows three owls sitting side by side on a bare branch, with a fourth owl hanging upside down from a smaller twig on the right. Below the branch, the words NOBODY'S PERFECT are set in ornate block capitals with striped, engraved-style shading. The linework is detailed with soft grey shading, and the image is entirely black and grey on a pale wood-grain background.

Owl Branch Tree Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, and shift yourself under the arch, for the wind comes off the tower like a hound with a grudge. Aye, that's the ash tree, the one that split the chapel roof in my grandmother's day and never once said sorry for it. Three owls sat on its bough back then, as round and grey as loaves set out to cool, and a fourth hung from the smallest twig by its own toes.

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The three were proud of their faces. Big-eyed, they were, and each swore the others looked less wise. The one that hung upside down was called Morrow, and he had a sour little wit and a habit of saying the truth the wrong way up. 'Nobody's perfect,' he said one night, when the others had boasted about the mice they'd caught. 'Not even you, Hob, with your fancy ruff.' The three clacked their beaks and said that was no way to talk to the moon's own lodgers.

Then the ash groaned in a gale, and the bough the three sat on snapped clean off at the trunk and went tumbling into the moat. Three owls went with it, flapping like wet sacks, and the water took their dignity before it took their feathers. Only Morrow, hanging by his toes, stayed put. He looked down at the wreck and the drowned bough and said nothing, for once in his life.

They say he went down the next morning and fished the old lord's silver spoon out of the reeds, the one lost since the siege, and laid it at the foot of the stone above the chapel door, where the words have been cut since before my time. Nobody's perfect, the stone says. Mind the step, it's slippery. Now, what was I saying about the mice?