She is dressed by her indifferent cousin. Her Uncle's creature, made in his bed and by the necklace she wears about her thin neck. It had been Melara's mother's necklace, mined from the famed opal mines found on the isles that make up the Hether Keep. Three fire opals glitter at Jeyne-the-maid's throat, fire opals set in a delicate black dragon-glass setting. It is simple but pretty, without many grand flourishes. Set to lay snuggly at the hollow of the throat, her mother had delighted in switching the ribbon in which she fashioned it on every day to match her dress, having great pride in her assortment of ribbons, all stitched by her own hand. It had been her Mother's favorite necklace, a gift from her Father she had worn nearly every day of her life.
The maid has switched the ribbons for some sort of thick, gold chain, and it clashes terribly with the dragon-glass setting and with the vivid opals.
Melara has a vivid memory of Jeyne-the-Maid burning her mother's ribbons. Melara kinda wants to punch her when the woman smirks at her welts as she shoves her out of the saltwater tub. Blood and saltwater drips onto the ground. Jeyne is a pretty, shapely thing, with long dark hair and doe-like eyes that don't match the cruel gleam in their brown depths. At her ears, she wears her mother's black pearl earrings.
She actually pinches the raised welt in her inner thigh. Melara jumps. And a single, equally frigid bucket of water is tossed over her.
It stings nearly as badly as saltwater.
"Oh, My Lady," Jeyne the Maid all but purrs, "You should've not raised the Lord's anger. Foolish girl. He does it for you. Now dry yourself you willful thing."
She tosses her a towel- thin as a air and scratchy beyond hell. It is matted already with dried blood. Melara's blood.
He does shit all you crazy sycophant. You just think he will carry you to new heights because he's fucking you. But you don't matter .
Jeyne is a woman of twenty and then something- and she is reveling in the torture and beating of a nine-year-old girl. She help beat Melara because she thought it was fucking funny to watch the heiress of their House be brought so low. Melara hates her. Hates her, more than her own murderer.
And that's quite a bar.
She is dressed, her wounds covered up expertly with actually decent bandages, medical salve. She suspects her Uncle doesn't wish to kill her in a beating or infection, nothing to tie back to him- hence the saltwater baths and the trappings of a proper rich girl of a medium-sized keep and honorable history as the Knights of Hetherspoons. He needs her alive, and Melara remembers the taste of her too-sweet food changing when she befriended Cersei Lannister-
She is dressed in scratchy small clothes.
Course stuff that grabs and catches on her bandages… And probably absorb any seepage from either her salve or her wounds during the day.
The shift that goes over that is fine. Long, covering her from neck to the soles of her feet. Over that goes two layers of both wool and cotton petticoats. And over that, it is a dress of orange velvet, and over that another over-dress of black velvet. The overall effect is perfectly concealing of all her ills, and it is beautiful and fitting of the heiress of Hetherspoon Keep, but a stark contrast to what she thinks is the life of a girl being beaten for that very right. When she catches a glance at herself in the mirror, she freezes.
She's a pretty girl, with a soft heart-shaped face, eyes a vivid sea green, and dark red hair that is being forcibly braided back in a single, endless strand. Freckles dot across her nose, over smooth cheekbones that are slightly blunted by childhood fat. She is like a fae, she is so pretty. It is so ridiculous when she looks in the mirror. No one would look at this girl and think her a victim or under the heel of anyone. Not with her eyes so wide and lively, not with her hair a glorious mull red, not with the way her mouth so readily smiles, automatically at the sight of herself looking so well.
"What's taking you so long, stupid?" a loud, eager voice.
Jeyne the maid drops to the floor in clumsy courtesy.
Melara breathes.
And turns to her murderer.