Black line drawing flash of two deer heads above an ornate heart padlock with a keyhole, surrounded by flowers and beaded chains.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two deer and a heart padlock design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pen line drawing on paper of two deer heads in profile, one overlapping the other, with a filigree heart-shaped padlock and keyhole below. Clusters of simple blossoms sit on either side, and beaded chains with small pendants hang from the antlers and lower right. The linework is fine and even, with light hatching on the deer's faces and ornamental scrollwork inside the padlock, and the design is shown in black and white only.

Fine line Neo-trad Deer Antler Heart Padlock Keyhole Flower Blossom Chain Bead Pendant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The padlock came across the counter at ten past eleven, wrapped in a handkerchief that smelled of violets and machine oil. Mrs Ellery Vane said she had lost the key in the spring and wanted it opened before the funeral directors called on Thursday. Tomas Rourke turned the heart over under the bench lamp. The filigree was worn smooth where thumbs had rubbed it, and the keyhole was so small he could have covered it with a fingernail.

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He worked a tension wrench into the cylinder while rain ticked on the shutter outside Carrow Street. The pins gave one by one, neat as a rosary. Mrs Vane watched his hands and told him that Arthur had bought the lock from a silversmith on Brigg Street in 1961, the year they married, and had it engraved with two stags because they had walked the Peak in the snow on their first night together and seen them standing side by side above the road, neither willing to go first. Tomas said nothing. He had heard a great many stories across this counter, and most of them wanted an answer.

The shackle sprang loose with a sound like a small bell. Inside the heart's hollow, folded tight as a bud, was a slip of paper in faded blue ink. Mrs Vane unfolded it without hurry and read it aloud in a voice that did not waver: "Two of us, one lock. You keep the key, I keep the rest."

She looked at the open padlock for a long moment, then took the key from the chain at her wrist, where it had been all along, and held it out to him. "Lock it again," she said. "I only wanted someone to see it open." Tomas closed the shackle. It clicked shut, and the sound seemed to carry all the way down the empty street.