Fine line tattoo of two goldfish with flowing fins on the side ribs, one in grey linework and one in orange and yellow watercolour tones.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two goldfish on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two goldfish with long, flowing fins curving around each other on the side of the ribcage. The upper fish is drawn in thin grey linework with light shading, while the lower fish is filled with soft orange and yellow tones that bleed slightly at the edges. The fish sit on bare skin against a pale, softly lit background, with a small dark dot near the lower fish.

Fine line Ribs Goldfish Fish Fin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bowl lurches on the third swell past the Cape Verdes, and you catch it against your ribs before the water can slop over the rim. Inside, the two fish stop their slow circling and hang there, fins spread like muslin left out in the wind. The grey one came aboard at Foochow, bought off a boatwoman for two coppers because its veil had torn and nobody else wanted it. The orange one was a gift from a Cantonese pilot who swore it would bring the ship luck. For eleven weeks it has refused to look at the grey one, and you have decided that is the most sensible thing either of them has done.

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The third mate has wagered a shilling that neither will see the Thames. You pay him no mind. What you attend to is the crack that appeared in the bowl off Madeira, the way you wrapped it in a strip of sailcloth and carried it up and down the companionway like a sick child. When the cook declared the water too warm, you moved them into a tin bath lashed under the galley stove, and you sat up nights with a cup of cold tea, watching the grey one's gills work through the lamplight.

Off Dungeness the wind dies and the ship sits on a sea as flat as pewter. You wake before the bell to find the orange fish circling the grey one, close enough that their fins brush, and the grey one has finally begun to swim with it, a slow loop that unpicks itself and starts again. You do not wake the mate. You simply keep watching, the lamp hissing, until the light comes up grey over the water.

At the Pool you carry the tin bath down the gangway in both arms, past lightermen swearing at their barges, and tip the water into the stone trough outside the chandler's on Wapping Wall. The orange fish goes first, a flash of flame gone under the weed. The grey one lingers at the lip, then follows, its veil unfurling behind it like a question finally answered.