Plug. Pins. More pins. Springs. Hull. Actuator. Body, square and black. Another spring. Shackle.
Body, square and gray. Just a simple ward lock, this one. Somepony was begging to get robbed. Spring and shackle.
Latch and lever, case and collar, disc and dial. A nice, round body, even if it was black. Shackle.
Pre-made pin-tumbler. Body square and black, but shrouded. Shack—
There came a pounding at the door.
The mare looked up from her work station and across the showroom. There was a shadow past the metal grill on the front door’s window. “Read the sign,” she called.
A moment passed soundlessly but for the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan, and the mare turned back to her desk.
The pounding came again.
The mare sighed, dropping the tools from her dim gray feathers. Off her stool, she stomped across the showroom floor and unlatched, unbolted, unlocked, and all around unsecured the door. She cracked it open, and a little chain was all that obstructed her view of the saddlebag-clad stallion outside. The dying sunlight showed her a brown earth pony, short mane with just a hint of waviness, youthful but mature, so incredibly—
She slammed the door shut, undid the chain, and ripped it open once again. “Hello,” she purred, leaning on the doorframe.
The stallion leapt back a step, eyes wide. “Er, hello.”
“What can I do for you?” The mare smirked, bringing a wing up to bounce her steel blue curls. “Interested in a love lock? It’d make a perfect gift for your wiiii…”—no change in the stallion’s expression—“…fffillyfrieee…”—nothing—“…eeescorrrr—”
A little colt—practically the stallion in miniature but for an added pair of wings—peeked around the stallion’s hooves, and the mare’s eyes shot down to him.
“Baby mama?” she tried.
“S-separated,” said the stallion, looking off. He coughed into his hoof, then met the mare’s eyes again. “Sorry to bother you so late, miss. We were at an art shop and we lost track—” He gave a little yelp, rubbing his hind leg where his son had smacked him. “I lost track of the time. But we need a locksmith.”
“Art, huh?” The mare’s smirk was shifting to become a grin, and she moved out of the doorway. “Come on in, big guy.” Her eyes drifted down past the stallion again. “And little guy.”
“It’s ‘Bristle’,” said the stallion as he walked into the store.
The colt followed slowly, staring at the mare all the while, until a brown hoof scooped him up.
“And my little fella here,” continued Bristle, ruffling his son’s mane with a free hoof, “is Swatch.”
Eyes focused despite the deteriorating state of his hair, Swatch nodded to the mare.
She giggled. Looking back up to the stallion, she said, “Luster Lock. Cool to meet you both.” Luster swept a hoof about the dimly lit showroom. “Welcome to Lock’s Locks: After Hours Edition.”
The showroom windows were doing little for the shop, so it fell to a pair of wall-mounted lanterns to breathe some life into the black tile, the white walls, the cold metal shelves, the locks and latches, hinges, catches. The lanterns were not up to the job.
Luster made her way over towards her work nook, and the boys followed. She said, “What brings you to a place like this on what I’m sure was an otherwise fine evening?”
A flittering buzz filled the air, and Bristle and Luster turned to see Swatch flying up onto his father’s back. He undid the clasp on a saddlebag there, drawing out a wooden box decorated with little doors and lots of brass. He held it up for Luster, who grabbed it with a wing.
“We got that lock box at a toy store earlier,” said Bristle, “but it turns out a couple of the parts don’t work right. Key doesn’t fit its lock, the bolt doesn’t want to move, and such.” He ran his hoof through his mane, eyes looking tired. “The store wouldn’t give us a refund, though, so we need—” Feathers.
Luster retracted her free wing from Bristle’s lips and set the lock box down on her workbench. “Have a look around the store, I guess.” In an instant, most of her primaries were wrapped around the handle of one tool or another. “This won’t take long.”
She set about it with a passion, and a storm of scratching and creaking and clacking and squeaking rose up. Swatch stared on at Luster, wide eyed.
Bristle chuckled, turning back to the front of the room. He wandered, reading little labels that were trying their very best to tell him what all of the tiny variations between each lock actually meant. Coming around a particularly large display of doorknobs, Bristle found a section of wall decorated very differently from the rest of the shop, so much so that he stopped in his tracks.
“Are these the ‘love locks’ you mentioned?” he called back. Padlocks were arranged haphazardly, their open shackles hanging off of a chain link fence that had been brought in.
“That depends,” came the reply. “Do they only come in what a sensible pony would call ‘colors’?”
They did, Bristle observed. Not an outward hint of black, white, or anything in between. They came in all shapes, too—but mostly hearts, though there was a great deal of variation even there. “What are they for, exactly? I’ve never heard of them.”
“They’re a symbol,” said Luster over the still-present noise of her work. “A couple gets one, maybe writes their names on it, then they put it up someplace—usually on a bridge, but not always—lock it, and throw away the key.”
“That’s cute.” Bristle hefted one love lock designed to look like a smiling sun, with a crescent moon for a shackle. “They sell well?”
“Ha!”
Now there was a bitter sound if Bristle had ever heard one. He turned back, saying, “What?”
The sounds of tinkering slowed. “I’ll tell you why you’ve never heard of them, Bristle: I’m having an amazing time trying to get them to be legal here.”
Bristle raised an eyebrow. “What, do they count as vandalism?”
“Yep,” said Luster, “and I did sell a few when I first started making ‘em, but as luck would have it, unbreakable love isn’t much of a match for a good set of bolt cutters. Or threats of a lawsuit.”
Bristle snickered and looked to the fence again. He leaned down to a group of simple, solid color hearts.
“But hey.” The little noises picked up their pace again. “Do you like—”
“You didn’t use primer.”
There was a tinny snap. And then Luster cleared her throat. And then came a bit of quiet but fervent whistling.
Bristle trotted back over to Luster and his son just as the former was dropping what looked like half of a thin screwdriver into a garbage bin. “Everything okay?”
Luster turned to him with a cheery smile, saying, “Yep.” She held the lock box aloft on a now tool-free wing, and Bristle’s brow raised. “I replaced a faulty spring in the pin-tumbler, cleared the rust off the slide bolt and its plate, oiled the hinges, and shined all the brass. Plus I sanded down the edges and corners a bit—they seemed kind of sharp.”
Swatch found the box dropping into his little hooves, and a gleeful grin tore across his features.
“Wow,” said Bristle with a dangling jaw. He reached into a saddlebag. “How much do I owe you?”
Luster waved a wing, a bright expression on her shaking head. “Nothing. We’ll call it even for next time.”
Bristle’s hoof paused. “Next time?”
“When you buy me dinner.”
The hoof retreated from the saddlebag, running its way once more through Bristle’s mane.