Faith Blessings

## Summary

**Faith Blessings** is a citizen of Valentine who manages the Saints Hotel. She lives just outside Valentine on the cattle farm she grew up on. She's mostly found between Valentine and Rhodes and sometimes in Blackwater. She's a quiet woman with a stern sensibility and a stubborn streak a mile wide. Independent to a fault, Faith has been doing things her own way, she's usually the first to offer help nd the last to ask for it.

## Little Girls Don't Play With Guns

She was three years old when she first touched a gun. Cold and smooth with a mother of pearl handle. It was just the prettiest thing she'd ever seen, cradled by her daddy's belt like her momma used to cradle her. Nowadays momma just told her everything she did was wrong. Faith's little hands were popped so hard it almost made her yelp like a pup.

"Don't you be touching that miss. Ladies don't touch things like that." Her mother snatched her by her wrists and pushed her hands into a bowl of flour and eggs.

The Saint family had been very successful cattle ranchers. They made money. And Faith's mother had higher aspirations for her only child. She steered her towards needlepoint and baking, and good table manners. And while Faith was actually good at these things, and even found some of them appealing, her interest was more with horses and sharp shooting and cattle wrangling. Her mother made sure to squash that though. A hand pop here and there grew to a hit with the switch. Her father probably would have stopped that nonsense if he'd known about it. But men didn't need to worry about the affairs of the home. By the time she was old enough to be shipped off to finishing school in Saint Dennis her back was a roadmap of thin, white scars. But you can be sure that Faith had only the finest of womanly crafts in her head.

## Married Life

Around about the time she was done with finishing school, Faith caught the eye of a young minister. He may not have been an entirely wealthy man, but he had a great amount of stature and ambition. He was going places, and he needed a fine Christian woman with fine Christian etiquette by his side. They were wed when Faith turned 16. He was a kind man with a lot of faith in the world. And while she may not have been in love with him when they were wed (more in love with the idea of leaving the care of her parents) she grew to love him over the next year when he decided to take the good word of the lord to the frontier.

They settled in Armadillo.

## The West

It was definitely not the life her mother had prepped her for. They built themselves a modest home not far from the sparkling new church where her husband would busy himself, and it wasn't long before their first child was brought into the world, a boy, the ultimate pride for Mr. Blessings. He was named after his own father, William. Things went relatively smoothly for the next few years. Faith adapted to the harder lifestyle that came with living out west like a fish to water. This was more her speed than what she'd learned in finishing school. She helped her husband with his church, being a sort of brood mother for the people who needed it. What little money they had was either put back to the church or to feeding the community.

Around 1893, John got an opportunity to travel further west, but he new he would be dangerous, Faith and his son were left behind to help the primary minister of the church and their community in Armadillo. Not but a week after he left, Faith discovered she was pregnant with their second child. She hoped he'd be back in time for the birth.

While Faith had a lot of support from her community, life on her own was exceedingly more difficult. Ever the adaptable, Faith again found that she enjoyed the feeling of providing for herself and being independent of her husband's wishes. She started hunting for herself and teaching her son all the things she'd wished her father had been able to teach her. The more vigorous work load pushed her into an early birth with her daughter, whom Faith named Lizbeth. Everyone said it was a miracle either of them survived, but survive they did.

Lizbeth was two when John Blessings finally returned home to his family. He was a different man, a harder man than the green, idealistic one Faith had fallen in love with. And she was a different woman. She wasn't apt to cater to his every want anymore. She wanted to run the house as she had for the past 2 and a half years without him in it. This ended with the eventuality of John taking the next opportunity to travel again, and this time Faith had no idea if he'd come back at all.

Then the sickness came.

## Don't Drink The Water

Lizbeth got it first. She went quick, he tiny little body just couldn't handle it. She'd never been real healthy anyway. She went so quick no one really knew it was what the rest of the town was getting sick with too. Faith buried her alone. She tried to get word to John... maybe she shouldn't have... Not long after Lizbeth's death other folk in the town started getting real sick. Faith spent most of her time at the church helping whomever she could. She got sick herself but she was lucky to recover. William wasn't so lucky. John turned up just in time to help bury him. John had been sick too out on the frontier, but he'd recovered as well.

After burying both children and watching their town die, John's mental state seemed to deteriorate even more. He turned more to the drink than to his wife and one night, during a storm, he'd picked a fight and left the house. He ended up falling off a nearby cliff. Faith found him the next day. She lied and said he'd gone down with the sickness. John had been a respectable, kind man, even with their differences. She didn't want anyone to think otherwise.

Faith stayed in Armadillo as long as she could to help the community she'd come to love... but it was just too difficult. She decided to return home to her father back in Valentine. Her mother had passed several years before and she thought maybe she'd find peace and a new place in life back home. However when she finally did return home, she'd found her father had passed too, not long before she arrived. And now Faith was the sole owner of Saint's Cattle Farm.

Now with no family to speak of, she tries her best to keep things going.

## Employees

Currently Faith lives at Saints Cattle Ranch and employs two cow hands to help her keep the peace at her small establishment. Jefferson Pierce, an elderly gentleman who has worked for the Saints since before Faith can remember, is now too old to do the work himself. Faith hired Viktor Dahl to help the old man keep the pace as well as patrol her humble plot to keep it secure. Since Viktor was hired as a Deputy, she's now hired Connor Acree, a flawed man with a complicated personality that Faith sees as someone who could use a fresh start.

Faith mainly works at the Saints Hotel in Valentine, an establishment that had traded hands since her mother passed about 6 years ago, but now she finds it back in hers. She has hired a quiet woman by the name of Rosie Rose to help keep the place as spotless as possible for any guests that might arrive. It has since been revealed to her that Rosie Rose is Elizabeth whom had been named in quite a few criminal activities. Faith kept her on feeling that the woman never got her chance at a fresh start either. It was with that thought in mind that Faith decided to pay Elizabeth's $300 fines in Rhodes. That is a secret between her, Elizabeth, and Sheriff Rhett White.

## Love Interest

As a widow coming back to Valentine, Faith had very little interest in pursuing any sort of courtship. But anyone can easily tell she feels loneliness on a deep level, even if she isn't usually one to look for large crowds. She's had several flirtations that lead to nothing but dear friends, not that she was ever upset with that. Due to an adventurous dating game during t he Valentine Mudfest, she was very briefly linked with Charles Hudson. But even Faith could see he only had his hear ready for one woman, and that wasn't her. She had felt her heart flutter for one Alvin Biggs but after being married to a man absorbed with his work once, she could see that Mr. Biggs seemed no different, and she valued his friendship far to highly to ever break it. After a long push and pull awkward romance, Faith finally fell into the arms of Undersheriff Virgil Simmons. She's highly protective of their relationship and only just recently has begun to relax about the information that they are a couple.

## Image Gallery

Faith Blessings