Black and grey dotwork and linework tattoo on the thigh of a stag head merged with an owl, with a triangle and circle symbol above and a dotted vertical line.

Split stag and owl head with geometric symbols

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical composition centred on a stag's head split down the middle with an owl's head and wing, with antlers rising on the left and a spread owl wing on the right. Above sit a triangle enclosing a circle with a vertical line, a smaller repeat of the same symbol, and stacked chevrons linked by a dotted line. The work is rendered in black ink and grey with fine linework and stippled dotwork shading on the feathers, fur and antlers.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Stag Owl Antler Wing Feather Triangle Circle Chevron Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the range, the pair of you, and mind the cat, she's been sick on the good rug again. Now. You'll want the one about the stag and the owl, because that's what the lodgers always ask for when the rain sets in and the sea goes the colour of old pewter.

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The stag was called Hollin and he lived up on the moor above Porthkennick, where the gorse grows crooked from the wind. The owl was Tamsin, and she kept the old chapel tower, the one with no bell left in it. They'd never once spoken, mind, because between the moor and the tower there's a track of three standing stones, and over the middle stone somebody long dead had scratched a ring inside a triangle with a line driven straight through it. Any creature stepping across that line was split down the middle, half one thing and half the other, until the tide turned twice. Nobody sensible crossed it.

Hollin crossed it anyway one wet March, because he'd heard Tamsin singing in the tower and wanted to see whose voice it was. He came out the far side with his left half still a stag, antlers and all, and his right half feathered and wide-eyed and owl-faced. Tamsin came down to look at him and found she had a wing that could only be spread on his side of the line, and the two of them stood there at that stone all night, each holding the other's half up against the weather.

So that's why, when you walk the coast path at dusk and the mist comes in off the water, you'll see a stag's head and an owl's wing at the edge of the field, and a row of little cairns leading off towards the tower. The tide turns twice a day, love, and they still wait on it. Now, who wants more tea?