Colour Japanese style koi fish tattoo with blue water splashes on the top of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Koi fish with water splash on a foot

Japanese · Other · Colour · Photo

A large orange and red koi fish swims diagonally across the top of a foot, with its tail fin curling up near the ankle. Blue and white water splashes surround the fish, and the scales are shaded with soft gradients. The bright colours stand out clearly against the skin, with teal nail polish on the toes below.

Japanese Other Koi Fish Water Wave Splash Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shush now, and mind the puddle by your boot. It has rained on Tuesday market since before your grandmother's grandmother sold cabbages under that tin roof, and the gutters run like the Ouse in March. Old Mrs Pengelly had a bucket of koi under her awning that week, orange as marmalade with white stripes like a fishmonger's apron, and they were as cross as a bishop with the damp.

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Young Tom Hollis came by with threepence and a jam jar, wanting one for his nan's pond. He chose the biggest, the one with the wide red back and the gold eye, and Mrs Pengelly tipped it into a paper bag full of rainwater. The fish knew better. Before Tom had reached the corner it twisted out of the top, slapped the wet cobbles, and went skidding down the kerb after the run-off, flicking its tail as if it had an appointment with the sea.

Tom ran. He ran past the cheese stall and the man selling phone cases, down the hill to where the gutter tipped into the harbour drain. There it hung, half in the water and half in the spray, its fins fanned out like a dropped umbrella. The rain beat the surface into little white crowns, and the fish rode each one up and let it fall, as if the weather had been arranged for its benefit.

When Tom came back with nothing but wet knees, Mrs Pengelly was already folding her awning. 'Harbour takes what it likes,' she said, and handed him his threepence back. He never did tell his nan. But on wet days ever after, he says, he could hear a splash under the market roof, and he never once looked round to see who had made it.