Black and grey tattoo of a large bow with a faceted heart brooch and a key hanging from a chain, placed on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bow, heart brooch and key on thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A bow with a faceted heart-shaped brooch at its centre hangs above a fine chain that drops to a small ornate key. The bow and brooch are shaded in soft greys with highlights, and the faceted gem pattern is drawn with clean linework. The design is set against plain skin on the outer thigh, with the bow forming the broad top of the composition and the key tapering downward.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

On the coaster Wren the galley key hung from a fine chain round the cook's neck, and he would not give it up for love or for the captain's threats. When the glass fell in the Bay of Biscay and the men began to shout for the spirit locker, young Ada Penrose went to him with cold hands and a set mouth.

Keep reading

Stay out of my locker, Ada, he said, and he was smiling, which was worse. Bring me the heart the sea wife keeps on the Scarra rock, and I'll open anything you like. So she rowed out in the dinghy at slack water, and on the black rock she found a woman with weed in her hair who held out one hand and waited.

Ada had only her mother's brooch, a heart of cut glass set in silver with a little bow at its top. She gave it over. The sea wife turned it in the light, counted its facets one by one, then pressed a grey ribbon of kelp into Ada's palm and said that a bow ties what a key cannot. Ada rowed home through the rising swell with the kelp knotted tight in her fist.

By morning the Wren had come through the worst of it, and the cook's chain lay on its hook in the galley where he had hung it. Ada tied the kelp to the rail beside it. The spirit locker stayed shut, and nobody aboard ever asked her what she had paid.

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