Full-colour Japanese-style tattoo of a red and white koi fish swimming among peonies and waves across a person's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi fish and peonies across a back

Japanese · Back · Colour · Photo

A red and white koi fish swims upward across the back, with its scales shaded in soft gradients. Large peony blooms in red, orange and yellow sit at the top and lower left, surrounded by green leaves. Dark grey wave patterns frame the fish and fill the background behind the flowers.

Japanese Botanical Back Koi Fish Peony Flower Wave Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The carp had failed at the falls of Kessock three springs running. Each time the river took him back down to the pool, and each time he came up again with his scales a little redder from the bruising on the rocks. The herons standing in the shallows watched him go and said nothing, because herons are sensible birds and know a lost cause when they see one.

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On the fourth spring an old woman was kneeling on the bank, pressing peony roots into the mud with a stick. She watched him thrash at the foot of the water. 'You keep looking at the top,' she said. 'Look at the wave in front of your nose instead, and climb that one.' The carp blew bubbles at her. 'Then I will never see the gate.' 'Then don't look at the gate,' she said, and went back to her roots.

So he stopped looking up. He took the first grey swell, then the next, the water pulling at his fins as though it wanted him to laugh. Somewhere on the bank the peonies she had planted were opening, red and gold, and their petals dropped onto the current and rode past him like small boats. He chased them up through the dark water, one wave at a time, until the roar of the falls was nothing but the sound of his own breath.

At the top he came out into light and found the stone gate standing open. The old woman was not there. Only a single peony bloomed on the lip of the rock, and beside it the river ran flat and quiet towards the sea. He turned once and looked down. Far below, the herons were still watching, and he found he could not remember why he had ever wanted to go back down.