Editing Eulàlia de Barcelona (section)

== Backstory and Description ==

Eulàlia was born to a wealthy merchant family in Barcelona, and named for one of the patron saints of that city. She was a beautiful child, but also sickly and there were worries she would not survive her first year. While this fear did not materialize, the near miss meant she was greatly pampered as a child. She became less sickly as she reached adulthood, but is still unable to exert herself in significant ways.

As Eulàlia grew up, she was educated by her mother in social graces and in managing the household. However, she was much more interested in the family business. Her father was indulgent of her when she was young, and often brought Laia along for his negotiations with merchants (bringing a cute child to negotiations is helpful too), or let her linger in his room while he went over the ledgers. This was a happy time in her life, but as she grew up her parents become less indulgent of her whims. 

Rather than give up on her dream of being a merchant, Eulàlia ran away from home at the age of 14. She cut her hair and started to dress as a man, though it took her a while to learn how to convincingly pass as one. 'Laius', as she took to calling herself, had a rough time in his first few years as an independent merchant, until she ran into a stroke of luck.

One day, she found a dying dog in a village and took pity on it, trying to nurse it back to health. Strangely, the dog did not seem to get better with care, nor did it seem to be obviously ill. She was dying from nothing, or so it seemed until Laia's journeys took her near a covenant. The dog slowly recovered, and Laia overcame her distaste for magi to ask one of them what had happened. The magus told her that the dog was a magical creature and required magic to survive. He offered to take care of it, but Laia refused. She named the dog [[AMG-Anna|Anna]].

Eulàlia and Anna have been inseparable since. After some years, Eulàlia discovered to her astonishment that she had come to understand Anna, and even other animals to a degree - that is, she gained Animal Ken through prolonged interaction with a magical animal. She also became Unaging, but is not in fact aware of it at present. Anna's magical powers have saved Laia's life on more than one occasion, and her dependence on magic has meant that Laia has often dealt with the Order of Hermes in the years since, and is familiar with them to some extent. She has not yet interacted with magi enough to be able to recognize and consciously compensate for the effect of the Gift the way a Redcap might, but might plausibly gain such skill in a few more years. It also helps that Anna likes magi and is entirely unaffected by the Gift - one cannot help liking someone their dog likes, just a little.

Eulàlia is ''stunningly'' beautiful, as a woman or a man - the kind of beauty that turns heads and brings trouble. In some ways, Laia dresses as a man as much because the attention she gets is easier to deal with as a man than as a good-looking woman traveling alone as because people take female merchants less seriously. She keeps her black hair at a length that is short for a woman and long for a man, but not unduly so in either case. As Laius, she hides some of the length of it under a cap, wears a heavy jacket that conceals her bosom and neck, and alters her posture and behavior. In some of the covenants she has become more familiar with she no longer bothers with the disguise, as she has discovered that magi are refreshingly uncaring about that sort of thing.