The first time she dies as Melara Hetherspoon, it is a shock.
Because she was just nine namedays, and she had only wished to know of her future when so much of it was in confusion. She only wondered if she would marry the handsome heir of Casterly Rock if Cersei would become her sister, as she wished and wished and wished for.
Because no one can hurt a Lady of Casterly Rock, not with Lord Tywin as its Lord.
She is frightened, with the words of Maggy the Frog echoing in her head like a much-repeated song. The worms shall have her maiden's head, she will not live the night-
Death does not come quickly the first time as Melara.
But nothing has ever been quick for Melara. Neither her compounded misery nor her many gathering sorrows, her all too fleeting happiness. They build. They take their time to gather strength. They come from time and her death is no different.
It is agony.
A betrayal.
A clawing to fight for herself because no one else will fight for her ever again.
Yet, still, Melara is screaming for Cersei, her friend, the one she wished secretly to call sister. She is clawing at the side of the well as she shrieks for her friend to help .
She can only see Cersei's brilliant, golden hair, flashing in the fading sunlight. So beautiful and glinting like the red blood that is dribbling down into her eyes, like the blood that she knows all too well. Then, the lid that had been slightly open before Melara had fallen through it, slid over the top of her only source of light.
Melara cries and pleads in the dark. Long after Cersei's steps have faded. Clawing at stone walls, breaking nails and leaving blood trails in the dark, and fighting for hours and hours-
Her head eventually slipped below the water, too exhausted to fight anymore.
Death comes slowly for her.
As all things do.
Six minutes of drowning, sinking, down and down in that endless dark, cold water. She feels the bubbles mockingly flow past her, leaving her throat. Tears at her eyes flow easily with the dark water that drowned her.
And Melara dies in the dark, just before the hour of the wolf, before the next day even arrives