Black outline drawing of a koi fish curling upward, with scale detail on the body and fins, in a Japanese-influenced flash style with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi fish line drawing

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A single koi fish is drawn in bold black outline, curled into an S shape with its head at the top left. The body is filled with rows of rounded scales, and the fins and tail are drawn as simple striped curves. The image is black line work on a plain white background with no shading or colour.

Japanese Koi Fish Scale Fin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ted, the wind took the carp kite off the back wall again on Tuesday, the one the Pelletier girl brought down from her uncle's shop in Liverpool, and it went straight out over the shingle like a dropped ribbon. Mrs Gorse says it will turn up in Wales. I told her Wales has enough fish of its own.

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It came back on Thursday, wedged in the hawthorn at the bottom of the cliff path, its tail torn into three stripes and one fin gone. Edwin the postman climbed for it with his sack still on his shoulder. He said the scales had printed themselves on his palms, little rounded whorls of black, and that he could not get the pattern off with carbolic.

We have fourteen guests this week, all of them wanting kippers at seven and nobody wanting to talk about the weather. The Sullivans in number six asked whether the kite was a sign of something. I said it was a sign that Mr Ruttle had bought the cheap paper and I would be having words. They laughed, which was the first laugh in this house since Father's funeral.

I have pinned the kite above the hall mirror with its mouth to the stairs, so every lodger has to pass it going up. Tomorrow I will take it down and try to mend the fin with brown paper and flour paste. Come at Easter if you can. The sea is high and the kite is ready to go back up, and I think the wind will want it again before the summer is out.