Orange and black koi on the ribs
Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo
Two koi carp swim in opposite directions across the side of the ribcage, one in orange and red with flowing fins and the other in shaded black and grey. A vertical column of Chinese characters sits beside the black fish. The soft shading and smooth gradients give the fish a realistic, three-dimensional look against the skin.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The carp in the Sunderland Road pond had been arguing about the water for three summers, and Auntie Mo, who fed the ducks at dusk and kept the heron off the lilies, said it was time someone settled it. So she sent for the two oldest fish, a copper one called Marmalade by the children and a sooty black one nobody had ever named, and she set them to swim the length of the pond from opposite ends until they met in the middle.
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Marmalade came up through the reeds in a rush, fins flaring like a torn umbrella, and flicked a spray of cold water over the stones. The black one took its time. It slid along the bottom under the willow roots, past the rusted pram wheel and the drowned tennis ball, and rose beside the reed bed without a single ripple to show it had come.
They met where the pond was deepest and stopped, nose to tail, and looked at each other for a long while. Mo leaned over the railing with her tea going cold. Then Marmalade spun in a slow circle, showing off every orange scale, and the black fish turned once on its own axis, unhurried, and went back the way it had come.
Mo said afterwards that she had expected a fight, and that she had been wrong. The pond, she told the ducks, was big enough for two colours that knew how to go in different directions and still find the same middle.
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