Two forearms with matching colour tattoos of patterned owls, flowers and leaves on grey branches, in a botanical illustrative style on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Owls on branches across two forearms

Botanical · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two forearms are shown side by side, each carrying a tattoo of owls perched on grey branches with red blossoms and green leaves. The owls have outlined bodies filled with decorative patterns in teal, pink, purple and cream, and the branches are shaded in solid grey. The pastel colour palette is set against bare skin with a plain wall and floor in the background.

Botanical Neo-trad Forearm Owl Branch Flower Leaf Blossom

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had stitched the owls onto the tablecloth the night before the wedding, because the hall's linen had come back from the laundry with a scorch across one corner and her aunt would not hear of a bare trestle. Cream, teal and plum, each bird fat and watchful, their chests worked in the same tight swirls her grandmother had used on the christening blanket. Nobody at the reception would look at the cloth for long. They would be looking at the bride, at the speeches, at the cake the baker had insisted on shaping like a stack of hay bales.

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At half past four, with the speeches done, Nell found her cousin Rhodri behind the village hall, lighting a cigarette he had promised their mother he would give up. The cherry tree by the gate was dropping pink onto the bonnets of the cars. "Auntie Glenys says the owls are watching us," he said. "Says they're the ones who keep the marriage honest."

"They're just cotton," Nell said, and then, because it was her grandmother's pattern and she had sat up until two in the morning matching the purple, she said, "Come and look at them properly."

Inside, the light through the high windows had gone the colour of weak tea. Rhodri ran a thumb along a bird's outlined wing and found the stitch he had dropped in the hem at eight years old, when Nell had made him hold the needle. The owl on the far end still had its head turned away from the top table, as it always had, and in the last warm minutes of the afternoon Nell decided that tonight it could turn round and see who had been brave enough to stay.