Fine line and dotwork koi fish tattoo in teal, grey and pink across a person's upper back and shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two koi fish on the upper back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

Two koi fish curve around each other inside a loose circular outline, with one fish shaded in teal and grey scales and the other drawn mainly in fine black linework. A cluster of pink dotted clouds sits behind the fish, with thin red lines trailing from the composition. The photograph is taken close up from behind, with the subject's head cropped out of frame.

Japanese Dotwork Fine line Back Koi Fish Scale Cloud Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mend the thread before the rain, Hana had told him, and Tomas pretended not to hear, because the red cord had been trailing from the sluice gate since spring and he liked the way it moved in the current like a loose word.

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The pond behind the chandler's shop held nine koi, and every one had a name the children shouted across the cobbles. Two were the trouble. The white fish with the black lace along its flank had been Mister Ochre since before the war, and the teal-scaled female with grey shadowing on her back was Lady Dusk, according to the baker's girl, who swore she had seen her snap a moth off the surface. The pair circled each other at dawn, close enough that their fins brushed, looping in a slow ring beneath the pink dotted clouds the wisteria threw onto the water.

Hana had left the village on the first train of the spring of 1953 and come back in October with a crate of sake and no explanation. She stood at the edge of the pond with her sleeves rolled and watched the fish for a long time. They were never meant to be kept apart, she said at last, only kept in view.

Tomas tied the loose cord to the gate post that evening, and the sluice ran clear. In the morning the ring of fish was still there, tighter than before, and the red thread lay across the stones like a line someone had meant to finish.