Black line drawing of a stylised animal leaping beside a blossom branch and curling cloud shapes, in a Japanese-influenced flash style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised animal with blossom branch

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing shows a stylised four-legged animal in mid-leap, with a rounded head, an open mouth and a curled tail. A branch with round blossom-like flowers and small curling swirls rises above and behind it. The linework is bold and uniform on a plain white background, with no shading or fill.

Japanese Animal Blossom Branch Swirl Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming down on the Thursday market since before the stalls opened, and Ruth Okafor was already tipping water from the awning when the beast came leaping down Caddle Lane. It moved the way a deer moves when it has forgotten there are fences, all four legs tucked and flung at once, and a branch of plum blossom grew out of its shoulders like something it had carried up from the hills. Traders ducked. A pyramid of tinned peaches went over. Nobody screamed, because the animal did not look as if it meant harm, only as if it had somewhere urgent to be.

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It stopped at her stall and lowered its head, mouth open as if about to speak. Ruth had kept one bolt of undyed silk under the counter for eleven years, meant for a wedding that had never been booked. She had no idea why she reached for it. The beast took the end of the cloth in its teeth and tugged once, gently, the way a child tugs a sleeve. Then it turned and went back up the lane, and the puddles it leapt over filled with petals that had not been there a moment before.

The rain stopped by noon. Ruth found the silk later, wound around the stall's central pole, printed in pale ink with a branch of round blossoms and a few small curls of cloud. Nobody on the market would say they had seen the animal, though several said they had heard a sound like a bell being rung underwater. She left the cloth where it was, and that week a bud opened on the plum tree behind the bus shelter, which had been dead for as long as anyone could remember.