If there was ever a thing to be remembered about Wayland Cranston, it was his stubbornness. Too stubborn to accommodate modern clothing, too stubborn to give up carrying the weapons that kept him alive in such a ‘civilized’ place as Emporia, Columbia. No longer a soldier, though his former commanding officer would disagree. He was now a bodyguard, not that he was terribly great at it. A well meaning man with guns. All because Slate had asked it of him. Slate lead him through Wounded Knee, Peking. War, he could abide. He was born into it, it came easy. The zealotry of these people, the changes he experienced. Those were things he did not enjoy abiding. He’d take fighting the Apache as he did in his youth over these fools, their Saints and Founders. Emporia, or maybe even Columbia in it’s entirety would never be the type of place he’d be comfortable in, but this was part of the job. Doing this kept him out of Finkton, kept him fed and clean. He flexed his hands, the urge to simply walk off and do… Something, preferably violent, weighed heavily on him as he waited outside her door. His charge, Lady Comstock. “Ma’am, you still alive in there?” He called through the door of her room with only a slight sarcastic tone, sitting atop some fancy looking, plush bench in the hall outside. His eyes were locked on his fingers, willing the bird-like talons that came with drinking a Murder of Crow’s vigor to appear then disappear. He was foolish enough to think this was a good idea, so now he had to master it fully. He was still getting a hold on the black splotches on his skin, or the fact that two crows seemed to hang about him at all times now. He’d come to name them Wild and Bill. Mostly he just wished that Wild would stop shitting on his hat.
VANITY WAS MOST unbecoming on any person; yet Columbia’s mother of sorrows was a vain creature; youthful and impetuous as any girl of nineteen ought to have been, though marriage had tamed her somewhat. Now quiet and brimming with unsaid jabs and sharp wit, the Lady Comstock expressed herself through clothes and jewels, much to the express irritation of her bodyguard. Could he not understand that she was expected to look a certain way? Modern royalty in the eyes of God and man: in the new world order, everyone had to conform. Even him. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” She called, voice muffled from behind gilded doors. Elegant hands moved, twisting and plaiting her curls this way and that until she could have stepped out of a postcard. Mother Superior had been keeping him waiting long enough: patience was a virtue, though the tone of his voice suggested that Cranston’s last thread of it was growing frailer by the minute. With one final pin placed into her hair and hat secured, she stood; exiting her quarters with finesse and a smile that would have made Aphrodite jealous. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
To think some young philly was to be where he ended his career, granted she was basically a queen but Cranston refused to acknowledge that fact fully. It may or may not have been out of a little spite, but he wouldn’t admit to that either. “Just checkin’ your vitals, ma’am! Don’t want to have to report to your husband that you died via dressin’ gown, is all.” His face screwed up as he thought on the logistics of such an image before shrugging it away, the bird on his shoulder silently jumping and landing back on it’s perch with ease. “Just imagine you takin’ that long to get going in the mornin’, Wild. Oof...” He murmured to the shouldered crow, gently scratching at the back of it’s head, replying with a quiet chirp. “One of these days, i’ll start treatin’ ya military style, and by days end, you’ll be done with all that frippery in a matter o’ minutes. Your husband was in the army, he’d probably go along with it.” As if he would. Probably hang the man for even jesting about it. But it was fun to tease the Lady Comstock. A woman like that was too young to give up on sass. It was then that a few of the servants passed, two young black women, giving him all sorts of odd looks, strange, grizzly, probably dirty looking man with birds sitting in their lady’s apartments. Chatting through a door no less.
The looks just earned them a wave and a snicker. And a resounding ‘CAW!’
Wayland could hear her footsteps as she approached the door meeting the hallway he had affixed himself to, and made to stand to his full height, adjusting his jacket somewhat. And as the beauty exited, giving him her best crowd-winning smile, he smirked in return at her remark. “It was, it was indeed, I believe my birds were eyeing me up for breakfast, in fact. I was that close to fading away.” He held up his hand, showing just how small of a distance he was from ‘the edge’ with his fore finger and thumb. Amused by his own foolishness, he gave a throaty chuckle before settling into his professionalism. As violence-willing as he was, as grumpy as he could be, he had to make a least a little joke out of it. How else would he make it through the day? “What’s on the docket for today, ma’am?” He asked, tone a little gruffer and a little deeper than just a moment ago, one hand extending outwards, beckoning her on as the other reached towards Bill, who’d settled on the cushion only to hop onto Wayland’s waiting finger.
