Flash sheet of tattoo designs photographed on a gift box, including a blue owl, a koi fish, a realistic eye, three BELIEVE lettering designs and a feathered headdress, all shown without a body

Traditional flash sheet with owl, eye and lettering

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A white flash sheet laid on a patterned gift box shows a set of tattoo designs. The designs include a blue-shaded owl, a black-line koi fish, a realistic brown eye, a feathered headdress, three stacked BELIEVE lettering pieces, Roman numerals, two crowns, a bird, a chi symbol and a Chinese character. The linework is mostly black and grey, with colour limited to the owl and the eye.

Traditional Lettering Owl Koi Eye Headdress Crown Bird Lettering Believe Roman numeral Kanji Flash sheet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pedlar's sheet had been pinned to the lychgate since Michaelmas, and by the second week the children of Hollin Cross could recite it the way they recited the psalms. Three BELIEVEs stacked like steps. A row of Roman numerals that the schoolmaster swore were only the year. Two crowns, one smaller than the other, for the miller's twins to squabble over. Nobody could say which picture had come first, or why the owl's eye seemed to look back at you wherever you stood.

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Old Agnes at the mill said the koi was the only honest thing on it, because it swam against the weir every spring and never once asked the water for leave. The feathered headdress made the carter uneasy. He would not walk under the gate after dark, and he kept his hat pinned down in the wind.

On the feast of Saint Brannoc, a girl called Tamsin, who had been told she was too clever for her own good, took the pedlar's pencil from the hedge where he had dropped it and drew a single line under the owl. By morning the owl had gone from the paper. It sat on the church roof with its blue wings folded, watching the valley, and when the bells rang it turned its head all the way round.

The pedlar came back the following autumn and found his sheet blank except for one word in the corner, written small in a child's hand: stay. He paid the toll, shouldered his pack and went on down the road without looking up.