Black tribal-style owl design with bold curved wing shapes and round eyes, perched on a branch that ends in a spiral.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised owl on a curling branch

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised owl with large round eyes, a small triangular beak and sweeping curved wings, perched on a horizontal branch. The branch ends in a tight spiral at the lower left and a thick, tapering curve rises from the right. Solid black linework on a white background, with no shading or colour.

Owl Branch Spiral Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third stair, it gives under a heavy foot. Sit where I can see you, in the chair by the window that doesn't rock. There. Now, you'll be wanting to know why my grandfather carved an owl into the newel post when there isn't an owl within twenty miles of Saltcombe that isn't a gull with ideas.

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The post came out of the Mary Ellen, the collier that broke up on the Scaur the winter of nineteen-oh-four. Half the town went down to the strand with lanterns, and Grandfather with them, because a lad was still in her rigging and nobody could reach him. The rope-maker's boy swore an owl had come off the headland that morning and settled on the bowsprit, and it wouldn't leave, not for shouting, not for stones. Grandfather said that was nonsense. Then he said the lad was lost before the tide turned, and the owl was still there, watching the water with those great round eyes.

He took the spar home when the sea gave it back. He whittled the owl from that timber and never finished the curl of the branch, because a spiral, he said, ought never to end. Every lodger since has asked why the eyes are so wide. Look at them and you'll see they're turned towards the door, not the stairs. That's how the keeper's wife wanted it, so the thing could see the boats in.

So when the wind gets up tonight, go to bed and leave the landing lamp lit. The owl does the watching. All you have to do is let it.