Two matching neo-traditional tattoos on wrists: a heart-shaped padlock with the word Always and a key with the word Forever, in grey shading with dotwork accents.

Padlock and key pair on two wrists

Neo-trad · Other · Mixed · Photo

Two wrists each carry a tattoo: a heart-shaped padlock with ornate scrollwork and the word Always beneath it, and an ornate key with the word Forever written down its shaft. The linework is bold and the shading is grey and black, with stippled dots arcing around both motifs. A soft red-pink wash sits behind the designs, and the pair is shown close up against a plain background.

Neo-trad Dotwork Other Padlock Heart Key Lock Script Always Forever Couple Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the drip off the awning, now, and come in closer, because the rain on Saltergate market has a way of carrying the words off before they land. Sit by the stove. I will tell you about Ada Pryce, who kept a locksmith's stall under the iron clock for forty winters, and the two lovers who came to her one wet Thursday wanting a pair of locks that could not be opened by anyone else.

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She had a rule, the way some folk have a rule about salt. She would never make a lock without first asking the customer what it was for, and she would never take money until the key was cut. These two stood dripping at her counter and told her in one breath that it was for always, and then the man said forever, and the woman laughed and said he could have forever in the key if he could fit it in the metal. So Ada took out her files and her grey blank steel and went to work by the lamp.

She made the padlock in the shape of a heart, scrolled all round like the ironwork on a church gate, and she stamped a word beneath it so no one could mistake its promise. The key she made ornate, a crown of little leaves at its head, and she filed the word Forever down its shaft in letters so fine you had to tilt them to the light.

They paid her in coins that smelled of the pier. They walked off under one umbrella. The following spring Ada found the padlock hanging on her own nail, the key still threaded through its loop, with a note in the woman's hand: keep these for us, we will come back when we need them. Ada kept them. Some say she is still waiting. I say she locked both away, and only she knows which one she turned.