Pencil drawing of a cartoon owl with closed eyes, scalloped wing feathers and a row of scalloped feet on a plain paper background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sleepy owl line drawing

Black and grey · Flash

A pencil outline drawing of a cartoon owl facing forward with two large round eyes shown closed by curved lines. The feathers on the chest and wings are drawn as overlapping scallops, and the feet are a row of small rounded shapes resting on a line below the body. The image is in graphite grey with no colour, on textured paper.

Owl Feather Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have worked the night shift at the Hollin Quay sorting office for eleven weeks before you notice the owl. It sits on the parapet above the loading bay, round as a dropped loaf, eyes shut in the way a man's are on the last bus home. Nobody else looks up. The lorries reverse, the conveyor shudders, and Dev from dispatch swears at the franking machine every ninety minutes.

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You start leaving the crusts of your break pasty on the bay wall. By morning they are gone. You begin talking to it under your breath while you sort, about the postcard that came through in a bundle of Christmas cards, addressed only to the woman with the green door, Lower Mill Street, with a stamp showing a lighthouse nobody has painted in years. The owl's left lid flickers once when you say the street name, and you decide that counts as an answer.

On the third Thursday you take the card out of your coat and walk the length of Lower Mill Street before dawn, when the gulls are still asleep on the chimneys. Most doors are brown or red. Number nine is green, flaking at the hinges, and on its step sits a saucer with crumbs in it, already picked clean.

You post the card through the letterbox and step back. Overhead, the first grey light catches a pair of wings lifting off the roofline, and the owl goes over the river with its eyes still closed, steering by memory alone.