Black line drawing of two flowing betta fish with long trailing fins and rising bubbles, shown as a tattoo flash design.

Two flowing betta fish with bubbles

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

Two betta fish with long, trailing fins swim in opposite directions, one above the other, with a cluster of bubbles scattered around them. The design uses clean, even black outlines with fine interior lines suggesting the flow of the fins and gills, with no shading or fill. The white background and centred composition make it a simple, self-contained piece of flash artwork.

Fine line Fish Bubble Fin Water

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo had kept the two bettas in the back room of the chandlery since spring, one the blue of a fishing net dried in sun, the other the colour of old brass, each in its own jar on the windowsill so they could not start a fight. Every morning Tomas Reyes, who swept the quay for her, tapped the glass and told them they were being very dramatic about it.

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Tomas did not think much of fish. He thought more about the tide tables pinned by the door, and the schooner Marisol, which had gone out on Tuesday and not come back. Her skipper was his older brother. Nobody had said the word lost yet, though everybody had stopped saying home.

On Thursday Mrs Okonedo emptied the jars into a glass tank to clean them. The brass fish flared its fins wide, long as a wedding veil, and the blue one answered by unfurling to twice that. They circled each other in the lamplight without touching, turning and turning, and bubbles rose between them like a question nobody wanted to be the first to ask.

Tomas watched until the bubbles stopped. Then he carried the tank to the window, where the grey light came in off the water, and went out to the end of the mole to wait. At dusk a lamp showed beyond the breakwater, swinging slow and steady, and he stood there until it was near enough to name, and then he went back inside to tell the fish they could stop being dramatic now.