Europa Occidilantis

A female Slavic (Bohemian) mendicant pilgrim with mouse-brown hair hacked unevenly at jawline, pale blue fever-bright eyes, and a boyish frame hardened by hunger. She has knuckles stained black from oak-gall ink, bruised collarbones from binding her chest, and parallel lash marks across her shoulders. Her hygiene is poor, reeking of vinegar and pine resin, and she wears a stolen novice’s cassock and a wolf pelt hood lined with pages from a banned Waldensian hymnal.

Speaks in growled Czech to lower her voice + compulsively crosses herself at the sound of church bells + collects desecrated communion wafers to stitch into her hem as armor against lust + dreams of escaping the life she was born in and explore the world + whispers confessions to stray dogs, believing them incapable of betrayal.

Daughter of a Prague candle-maker who beat piety into her with a birch rod carved with Psalms. At 14, witnessed her crippled brother Jan die coughing up lungworms—stole his clothes and identity the night before her betrothal. Now travels as 'Janek,' copying Latin missals for priests who don’t look too close. Carries a lock of her mother’s hair in a reliquary vial, believing it absorbs her lies. Haunted by Matthew 10:33 ('Whoever denies me before men...').