Small black and grey fine line tattoo of a betta fish with flowing fins on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Small black fish tattoo on inner forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a betta fish in profile, with long flowing fins and a raised dorsal fin, sits on the inner forearm close to the wrist. The linework is fine and the body is built up with soft, stippled shading in black ink. The fish is set against plain pale skin and a light grey background, with a grey knit sleeve at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Realism Forearm Fish Fin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dorothy had kept the betta on the windowsill of Room 4 for twenty-six years, long after the class pet rota had been quietly abandoned by everyone else. When the reunion committee met in the old staff room of St Aidan's, she carried the tank up the stairs herself, wrapped in a tea towel, because she did not trust anybody else with the water.

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Maurice Crane, who had sat behind it in 1987 and fed it crushed flakes when he was meant to be doing long division, leaned close to the glass. The fish was dark as ink, its fins hanging like a wet umbrella someone had forgotten to shake out, and it drifted without any interest in the fuss. "Is it the same one?" he asked. "Don't be daft," said Dorothy. "That one went belly up over the Easter holidays. This is a descendant, more or less."

He did not tell her about the summer after Year Six, when he had carried the first one home in a jam jar under his coat and kept it in a washing-up bowl beneath his bed. He had brought it back in September with a note tucked against the glass that read Borrowed, not kept. Dorothy turned from the tank and gave him a look over her glasses that suggested the whole business had been entered in the register at the time. "Stolen, presumed happy," she said. "I wrote that in the book, and I never once went looking for it."

The fish turned slowly in the light from the high window, its fins opening and closing like a slow hand. Maurice put one finger against the cold side of the tank. After a moment the fish came over to see what he was, decided he was not worth the bother, and drifted off to the far corner.