Eight Days In Prague
Character designs, items, and item descriptions for a story about an oligarch’s wife who takes her son on a winter vacation. Each item is is individually sourced and historically accurate to the late 1920s.
Tereza Železný
Tereza is a wealthy oligarch’s wife with more than a passing interest in the occult. It’s suspected that she took this trip less as a way to have fun and more as a way to get away from home.
Heinrich Železný
Heinrich is a 10 year old boy who subsists on cold milk, dirty novels, and hugs from his mom. At some point during their trip he found a chubby white frog, and has carried it with him ever since.
Inventory
Items of significance during their vacation. Tereza didn’t pack much, but what she did bring is special. Among the requisite compact mirror and hair gel is a bloody handkerchief, spirit candles, and a note stained with lemon juice. A more detailed description is below. The numbers in the list correspond to the numbers in the image.
Three seven-day candles, in black, blue, and yellow. A black candle offers protection from serious illness and evil. Blue is useful for the examination of emotions. Yellow brings clarity, and eases decisions.
A battered book. New mothers often keep these during their child's first year of life and fill it with photographs and sometimes fingerprints or locks of hair.
A diary purchased in Germany. Only the first few pages are filled. On the inside cover, weakly and hastily written, is the letter H.
An icon of St. Dymphna of Ireland. Murdered by her father at the age of 14, Dymphna is the patron saint of the nervous and emotionally disturbed.
A sterling silver hairbrush, recently polished. There are still some strands of wavy dark hair embedded near the center.
A compact mirror plated in jade. It used to make a nice snap when opened or closed, but it's been around the block too many times now.
A well-loved and very slippery bottle of Brilliantine hair grease, to be worked into the hair while still wet for enhanced shine and ease of styling. It was nearly full two days ago, but enough has been used to suggest that someone else has been experimenting with it.
Pond's cold cream, to be applied to the face nightly. In 1923, on a visit to America, Queen Marie of Romania tried some and loved it so much she brought a large shipment home with her.
An albino frog, fat from popcorn, peanuts, strawberries, and whatever else is easy for a boy to slip into his pocket and smuggle away from the table. Frog season is long over in Prague. One has to wonder how it's still alive.
A nice cold glass of milk.
A scrap of paper, folded and unfolded many times. It appears to be blank, but if held to the nose it smells like sweat, and, very faintly, lemon juice.
A whiskey flask in an odd circular shape. It's very heavy, and engraved with a faint pattern. Too unwieldy to be fashionable, it's likely a family heirloom.
A handkerchief clotted with dried blood. Many men killed during the Great War were too mangled to send home to their families. In this case, diaries, hats, and other possessions were given as mementos.
A kind of combat knife used by German light infantrymen during the Great War. It doesn't look like it was used at all.