Black line drawing flash of two koi fish and three lotus flowers, with an Om symbol in the central lotus, in a Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi fish and lotus flowers design

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of two koi fish swimming among three lotus flowers on a cream background. The koi on the right is shaded with scale patterns and fin detail, while the smaller koi and the lotus petals are drawn with simple contour lines. The largest lotus at the bottom has an Om symbol at its centre, and the composition flows diagonally from top left to bottom right.

Japanese Botanical Koi Fish Lotus Flower Om symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond behind the Thornbury mill had been dug by a man who wanted a quiet place to think, and by the time Ada Pell came to scrub its edges, the lilies had outgrown him. Three flowers stood on the black water that August, and two koi kept company beneath them: a big gold-orange fish with a fin like a torn sail, and a smaller, sharper one that nosed at everything.

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The miller's boy, Tom, claimed the big one had been there since his grandfather's day, and that the largest flower, the one with the mark stamped at its heart, was where the old fish went to sleep. Ada didn't believe him. She had watched the small koi press up against that blossom every evening, as if it were knocking to be let in.

In September the flood came down off the hill and tore the sluice gate away. Ada waded into the shallows to drag the weed clear of the outflow and found the big koi stranded in the mud, gills working. She lifted it with both hands, cold and heavier than she expected, and carried it to the deep end. When she looked back, the smaller fish had followed her the whole way and was circling the spot where the great lily had torn loose.

The flower sank that night, and Tom swore the mark had gone down with it. Ada didn't argue. The following spring a single white bud broke the surface in the same place, and both fish rose beneath it at dusk, one behind the other, neither in any hurry to leave.