Painted design of two blue and black betta fish curving around a pale blue circle on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two betta fish in a circle

Mixed · Flash

Two betta fish with long, flowing fins face each other in a loose circular arrangement. The fish are rendered with soft, feathered brushwork, with dark grey-black bodies and deep blue fins that fade into the white paper. A thin pale blue ring encircles the pair, which sit off-centre in the frame with plenty of open space around them.

Fish Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The windfalls had been lying in the long grass since Tuesday, so Ruth was sorting the bruised from the sound when she noticed the water in the two jars on the packing-shed sill had gone cloudy in the heat. She tipped one towards the light. The fish inside lifted its fins at her, a dark slow shimmer going blue at the edges, then turned its back as if she had insulted it.

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Her father had bought the pair from a man with a tray at Ledbury market, who swore they would kill each other if they shared a tank. So they had lived apart all summer, one at each end of the sill, flaring at their reflections and at each other through the glass. He used to say it was the only argument in the orchard he never had to referee. Since April nobody had changed the water but her, and she did it badly, with a tea cup and a sense of guilt.

On the last Saturday of August she carried both jars to the big enamel basin under the Bramley, where the sun came through the leaves in coins. She tipped the fish in together, expecting the worst. For a moment they hung at opposite sides, fins spread wide like the two halves of a closed fan. Then one drifted in, and the other followed, and they began to turn slowly around the rim, trailing their long blue tails the way water trails from a rope.

Ruth sat on an upturned crate and watched them go round. A wasp landed on the edge, considered the water, and left. She did not change the water that week, and it stayed clear for longer than she had any right to expect.