Traditional-style flash design of a yin yang symbol, with the black side filled with red and yellow flames and the white side with blue water splashes, shown without any body placement.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Yin yang with fire and water

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A yin yang symbol sits at the centre of the design, split into a black and red half and a white and blue half. The red half is filled with flames in red, orange and yellow, while the blue half has stylised water splashes and droplets. The bold black outlines and flat, saturated fills give it the look of a classic flash sheet design.

Traditional Yin yang Fire Flame Water Splash Wave Droplet Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The kiln at Tanner's Yard went cold the same night the canal froze over, and Ruth said that was the sort of coincidence you were supposed to ignore. I didn't ignore it. I walked the towpath at midnight with a torch in one hand and her old flash sheet tucked under my coat, the yin yang she'd drawn at nineteen, fire on one side and water on the other, its black outlines gone soft from years of being pinned to a wall and pulled down again.

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The lock-keeper's hut had a light on. Inside, a man called Pike was feeding coal into a stove that smelled of wet wool. He said the ice had cracked the sluice gate and the water was loose in the lower basin, pouring over the weir like it had somewhere better to be. "Your sister's kiln is on the wrong side of that," he said, and I saw what he meant. The ground behind Tanner's sloped straight down into the cut.

We went down together with a hand-cart and a stack of sandbags, the orange glow of the one working lamp throwing our shadows up the brick. Every time the water hit the gate, the sheet in my coat crackled against my ribs. It was only paper, and Ruth had told me once that flash was for choosing, never for keeping.

By dawn the kiln was still standing and the canal ran clean under the bridge. I took the sheet out to check it. The water had turned the blue half to a grey smudge, but the red flames had held their colour, bright as the day she drew them. I left it on the bench for Ruth to find, the two halves still touching at the centre.