Colour neo-traditional tattoo of a purple owl with large round eyes and a teal outline, on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Purple owl tattoo on the wrist

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A cartoon owl perched in front of the viewer, with a purple body, scaled feather patterning, large round eyes rimmed in yellow and green, and a small yellow beak. The bold dark linework is outlined in teal, and the blue chest and pale grey wing feathers add soft shading. The owl fills the frame on a pale forearm, with a brown cord bracelet and small charm visible at the lower left against a dark car interior.

Neo-trad Forearm Owl Bird Eye Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the reunion remembered Ptolemy except me, which is how I ended up spending the whole Friday night of the Hollins Lane Old Boys and Girls dinner staring at the empty glass case by the stage. Mr Ackroyd had kept that owl for thirty years. Its eyes were brass buttons, its feathers gone grey with dust, and every Thursday of my final term I was sent to wipe its case for a detention I never quite deserved.

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The trouble started in the art block. Someone, and I still say it wasn't me, dabbed the owl with violet poster paint for the Year Nine display, and the colour soaked into the stuffing so it looked like it had been dyed in a bargain jumper shop. Ackroyd didn't shout. He just folded his hands and said the bird had been to war and come back more interesting. We all laughed. Then the case went quiet, and nobody would say where the owl had gone.

Gavin Mott, who now sells houses in Doncaster and tells everyone so, came over with two warm lagers and asked if I'd heard it was buried under the football pitch. I said I hadn't. I went to the cloakroom for my coat and there it was on the top shelf above the hooks, purple and patched, with a school tie knotted round its neck like a bib. Someone had pinned a note to one wing in capitals: KEEP IT SAFE. IT REMEMBERS WHO WAS LATE.

I carried it back into the hall under my arm. The disco lights swept across its glass eyes, and for a moment I could have sworn it blinked. I set it on the windowsill beside the trophy cabinet where the whole room could see it, then went back to my drink feeling about fifteen again, and Gavin, for once, had nothing clever to say.