Close-up of a red goldfish and a black goldfish tattoo with flowing fins on the side of a person's ribs, in soft watercolour-style shading.

Red and black goldfish on the ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

Two goldfish swim in opposite directions across the side of the torso, one in red and one in solid black, with long, trailing fins. The linework is soft and loose, with blended shading and watercolour-like washes that fade at the edges of the fins. The red fish sits higher on the ribs and the black fish sits lower near the waistband of the jeans, against a pale background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag, the ferry has been cancelled again, so this goes with the post van on Thursday, if the van runs. You will want to hear about the goldfish. Mr Abernethy finally drained the old cistern behind the chapel, the one the gulls have been drinking from for a decade, and found two fish in the silt that some child must have dropped there years ago. One was red as a pillar box, the other black as tar, and both had grown fins longer than their bodies, trailing like wet silk.

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He brought them to me because I still have the big enamel basin from Mam's kitchen. I set it on the windowsill and they circled it in opposite directions all afternoon, never once meeting, though the basin is hardly wide enough to keep them apart. I have been calling them Ruth and Donald. Ruth never stops moving and Donald only goes where the light is.

Last night the wind came round to the north and the sea got into the lane. I found the basin tipped over on the flagstones, water running to the drain and both fish flapping in the wet. I was sure they were finished. But when I scooped them back, the red one wound itself through the black one's fins, and they hung there together, barely moving, until the water warmed around them.

Tell me if you want them. I cannot keep them past the spring, and I am not sure I want to be the one who decides which of us gets the basin.

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