Japanese style full sleeve tattoo on an arm, showing a red koi carp, purple lotus flowers, cherry blossoms and clouds, shown from three angles.

Koi and lotus full sleeve

Japanese · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

Three views of a full arm sleeve showing a large red and orange koi carp swimming up the upper arm, with cherry blossoms and a purple lotus among grey cloud and wave shapes. The shading is smooth and grey behind the colour, with bold black outlines and fine scale detail on the fish. The composition wraps around the arm, with a second fish and more waves visible on the reverse side.

Japanese Upper arm Shoulder Koi Lotus Cherry blossom Cloud Wave Sleeve Dragon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond behind the Hollin Inn had been frozen since the Tuesday, and Maud had stopped expecting anything from it but the groan of ice shifting in the night. Snow sat on the stone rim like icing left too long on a cake. She carried the kitchen bucket out with the poker under her arm, because the pump had seized again and the guests in the snug would want their washing water by six.

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She struck the ice near the lily leaves, where the water stayed darkest, and the crack ran off in a fine white web. Beneath it something moved. A flash of red, then orange, then the broad slow sweep of a fin she knew from childhood. Her father had kept three koi in that pond and named them after the saints of the parish, and he had always said a carp that climbed the falls would come back a dragon. The one called Saint Brendan had died in October. Maud had buried him herself, under the damson tree, with a spade that was too big for her.

The dealer in the snug had offered her forty pounds for the lot that afternoon, sight unseen, and she had told him the fish were not for sale. He would not believe her until he saw the pond. She knelt on the frozen step, pressed her palm to the cold, and waited while the koi drifted up beneath the ice, its scales catching the lamplight from the kitchen window like a row of small coins.

When the dealer came out with his collar up, she was already filling the bucket from the hole she had made. The fish turned once beneath the glass and was gone into the dark water. Maud set the bucket down, let the snow settle on her shoulders, and said nothing at all.