Colour tattoo of three owls perched on a branch with green leaves, placed on the forearm.

Three owls on a branch on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

Three cartoon owls with large white-ringed eyes sit side by side on a brown branch that trails green leaves across the forearm. The owls are blue, purple and teal, with bold dark outlines and simple shading on the feathers. The pale skin and plain wooden background keep the focus on the design.

Forearm Owl Branch Leaves Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pargeter had let the top room at the Gull and Lantern to the same three owls every October for eleven years. Each autumn they arrived on the same salt wind, one after another, and perched on the brass rail above the front door as if it were their own branch. Eudora, the blue one, always took the left end. Mabs, the purple one, sat in the middle and complained about the damp. Fenwick, the teal one, was the youngest and the only one who had ever paid the rent in cash.

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This year the rent was late. Fenwick had spent the summer at the pier arcade trying to win a goldfish, and the goldfish had won instead, so he sat hunched on the rail with his great white-ringed eyes fixed on the sea as if it owed him money. Mrs Pargeter came out with a tea towel over her shoulder and found the three of them pressed together against the rain.

"You'll not get a room on a promise," she said.

Fenwick unrolled a paper from his talons. It was a map of the cliff path, with a pencil cross beside a cove nobody visited. "There's treasure under the chalk," he said, "and I'll split it three ways." Mabs rolled her eyes. Eudora, who had never once spoken without thinking first, said, "Then we'll dig first and pay later," and Mrs Pargeter, to her own surprise, laughed and went to find the spade.

The cove was a mile down the path, and by the turn of the tide they had dug a hole the depth of Fenwick's wingspan. What came up was a biscuit tin full of sea glass, bottle-green and cornflower blue, and beneath it a brass key with no lock to fit. Mabs said it was worthless. Eudora held it up to the last of the light and said nothing at all. They carried the tin back between them, and when they reached the Gull and Lantern the rail was waiting, and the three of them settled onto it like leaves that had decided, after all, to stay.