Colour tattoo of a cartoon purple owl with large teal eyes perched on a brown branch, with a small teal leaf, on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Purple owl on a branch on a thigh

Thigh · Colour · Photo

A cartoon owl with a purple head, lilac body, large teal eyes and a small yellow beak sits on a brown branch with a teal leaf hanging below. The linework is soft and the body uses gentle gradient shading, with the feathery head tufts drawn in fine purple strokes. The design is shown in full colour on the outer thigh, with the owl centred above the branch against plain skin.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had been on the mizzen stay since before the boats went out, and in all your years in Penwick harbour you never saw it look away from the water. Your father called it a bad omen. Your mother called it company, and every evening she set a saucer of herring scraps on the quay wall so it would leave the gulls alone.

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That season the fleet was six boats and the Marigold was one hand short. You were fourteen and too thin for the nets, so they gave you the lamp and the tiller, which the men agreed was boy's work. Out past the breakwater the sea went the colour of wet slate. Whenever you glanced up, the owl was there at the top of the rigging, round-headed and unbothered, its tufted feathers lifting in the wind as though it was trying to hear something under the engine.

The night the nets came up empty and the fog closed in, the other boats ran for the north channel and left you behind. You could not see the breakwater light. You could not see your own hands on the tiller. Then, through the grey, came a small steady gleam at the masthead, two pale rings of light turned towards you, and you understood the owl was watching the way home. You put the bow on it and kept it there until the stone walls rose out of the murk.

At dawn the owl was still on the stay. You climbed the quay with the empty saucer in your hand and set it down by the wall, and nobody told you to do it.

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