Small black and grey owl tattoo on a branch with scribbled script beneath it, placed behind a person's ear.

Small owl tattoo behind the ear

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A small owl perches on a branch behind the ear, with loose scribbled script or numerals beneath it. The owl is drawn with fine outlines and light shading, and the marks below are thin, sketchy strokes. The tattoo is in black ink and greys against the hair and skin, and the close crop keeps it as the main subject.

Other Owl Branch Script Numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The owl had already taken the last vole from the chapel steps when you reached the broken arch of Hallowmere keep, and it turned its head to look at you as though you were late for something you had promised it.

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Your job, the steward Ada Corrie told you on your first morning, was the tally. Every dusk you climbed the north tower and scratched a mark beside the others on the lime plaster, in threes, because the old lord had liked his sums neat. Three for the rooks that roosted under the leads, three for the salt carts labouring up the valley road, three for each winter the roof held. Beneath the sums someone had scratched a branch with a bird perched on it, and nobody living could say who.

One evening the blackthorn outside the window bent under the owl's weight, and you counted the marks aloud as Ada had taught you. The total came to a figure that matched neither the carts nor the rooks. The owl blinked at you from the sill, unhurried, the way a clerk waits for a signature. Only then did you understand that the tally had never been kept for the lord at all.

You took the nail from your coat pocket, scratched three short strokes beneath the last of the old ones, and left the casement open for the bird.