Coloured pencil drawing of a koi fish and a long-beaked bird above stylised swirling waves, in a Japanese-influenced flash design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi and bird over swirling waves

Japanese · Mixed · Flash

The drawing shows a koi fish turning towards a long-beaked bird with a curved tail, both set above stylised scrolling waves and faint cloud outlines. The fish scales and the bird's feathers are rendered with fine, fluid linework and detailed hatching. The palette is muted, with grey-green, dusky red, ochre and rose tones on a pale background.

Japanese Koi Bird Fish Wave Swirl Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Hollis had kept the goldfish pond behind the chapel for thirty-one years, and in all that time nobody had seen the big carp rise to the surface to look at anyone. Yet on a wet Thursday in March 1956, while the roofers were slating the nave, it came up through the green water and lay there, watching the men's boots on the path as though it were waiting for somebody in particular.

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The somebody arrived at noon, a long-billed bird with a tail that curled like a breaking wave. Young Tom Ashby, who ran the milk round and had too much time on his hands, swore it was a kingfisher with a grudge, but the bird paid him no mind. It perched on the coping stone with its bill angled down like a pen nib, and for an hour the two of them considered each other while Tom ate a bun and the clouds came over the spire in slow grey scrolls. Nobody had told the carp it was allowed to be curious, but it turned its good eye to the bird and kept it there.

When the slates were on and the men had gone home for their dinners, Mrs Hollis came out with a bucket of crusts and found a single scale on the flagstones, rose-coloured at the rim, and a bronze feather floating on the water where the carp had been. She fished it out, dried it on her apron, and tucked it into her Bible at the page with the flood in it.

The pond was never the same afterwards. The carp would rise each time a long-tailed shape crossed the sky, and every March, when the rain came sideways over the churchyard, Mrs Hollis would scatter her crusts a little wider and wait for the feather to be sent back.