YSRAN - 276

Ysran worried about her daughter.

At eight name days, her Meena was quick to anger with a venomous tongue and scathing glares. Even worse, Meena had already come to blows with several young men in their town of Lemonwood, seeming to not care for her own bodily safety as she gave as good as she got. The most recent altercation was just yesterday evening when the tanner's son had said something to upset her daughter. Not but a couple moments later was the boy laid out in the street with a bloody nose and wounded pride.

Believe it or not, her daughter has always been this mercurial. When she was born, she had been quiet as a mouse — to the point where Ysran had thought her stillborn — only to let out the loudest wail she had ever heard in her life. Her girl cried and screamed for hours until her little body could not take it anymore and she drifted into a fitful sleep, only to wake up and cry again. This cycle lasted for days, weeks even, and Ysran could do nothing to stop it. She was a healer by trade, and she checked her child over and over to try and find what ailed her child so that she cried like this, to no avail.

One day, she woke to nothing. Her heart clenched as she thought the worst, that whatever had ailed her daughter had led her to the arms of The Stranger. Ysran slowly got to her feet and walked to the crib where her daughter lay, only to see her little Meena staring back at her with eyes as dark as midnight. She saw her little chest move with breath and she let out a sigh of relief. Her daughter was alive.

Meena seemed to hold a cold fury about her that was out of place for a person of the Salty Dornish and Summer Islander blood. Unforgiving and blunt to a fault, her little girl had few acquaintances and fewer friends. She treated Ysran respectfully and with care, but there seemed to be a distance between them that she could not explain. It was one of her child's many oddities. Meena was obsessed with cleanliness, going to the river every night to bathe. She scrubbed her hands with soap between each patient and even insisted that they use an alcohol too strong to drink to clean wounds and equipment. She boiled water before use and insisted moon blood rags be boiled before use. Beyond this, her daughter refused to eat pork, point blank. Her words were also laced with a strange lilt that did not make sense to many as she was born and raised in Lemonwood.

Despite what the people of Lemonwood may say about Meena's character and oddities, they could not deny that she was a talented healer, perhaps even better than Ysran herself. Her girl worked diligently and had saved a good many people a lot of pain. Though rather terse, patients were treated with swift and smooth professionalism, with the occasional smile or word of encouragement for women in labor and children five name days and under.

Ysran saw that her daughter was restless, sometimes she would catch glimpses of something that scared her. Meena sometimes looked lost, defeated, and totally hopeless — just for a moment before something hardened in her once again. Ysran wanted what was best for her and to steer her away from a dark path she could see her daughter going down.

Sometimes Ysran blamed herself, thinking that her child's lack of a father was the source of her anger. Ysran had fallen pregnant with her by a man from the Summer Islands after a whirlwind romance just as she had reached five and ten. Enraptured by his tales of the East and all of the ports in Westeros he had visited. He had promised to take her with him when his vessel set sail for White Harbor with the cargo of citrus found only in Lemonwood — and then back to the Summer Islands, where they would be wed. He bedded her that night and left in the early hours of the morning while she slept. His ship had set sail and her mother was left behind, with her child quickening in her womb.

She loved her child, she truly did, but it's times like these that she wished she understood her daughter.

"That daughter of yours damn near broke my boy's nose. His eyes are all blackened now and he can't see!" Fez, the town tanner, roared in her face. The scent of carrion, lye and body odor wafted from his figure as he stood in her doorway.

She tried not to gag as she replied, "I'm sorry. I'll speak to her about this matter, I'll see to it that she is properly punished."

Fez narrowed his eyes, "See that it's done." He spat at her feet and turned on his heel, muttering, "Damned witch."

She closed the door and turned around to see her daughter glaring murderously at the door that the fetid man had just vacated. She looked at her mother, "Now you see why I punched his son. He's actually worse than that sack of shit that is his father," she cursed derisively, a snarl maring her childish visage.

Ysran sighed as she walked over to her daughter and enveloped her in a hug, the girl's wiry body pressed against her own, "My sweet, we can't hurt everyone who slights us with their words. Sometimes, it's best to let go and move on."

Her daughter pulled away, her eyes dark and angry, "No Mother, you don't understand. He didn't say anything about me, he insulted you. I won't put up with anyone talking about you that way." She shook her head angrily, "Why do we have to stay here? The people don't appreciate it and we're hardly making enough to get by. What happens if there's an emergency? We have no money and no future here."

Her response to her daughter's words struck her like an arrow, "My desert night, it is because the people need us. It is our duty as healers to help without want for recognition or recompense. The gift is life."

"Some gift this is," Meena scoffed.

Ysran reeled as if struck, "You don't mean that," she shook her head, her chocolatey waves flying frantically. She looked at her heart outside her body, her beloved daughter, and whispered, "Please say you don't mean that."

Her daughter shuddered and spoke remorsefully, "I'm so sorry Mother, you're right. I don't mean that. I let my words get away from me again, I was wrong."

MEENA - 280

'She deserved better than me,' she thought morosely as she stood vigil over her second mother's body. Aalia was now Meena, a 29 year old woman stuck in the body of a twelve year-old. She had spent her second childhood with Ysran, but could not let go of her first — where she had older brothers and a younger sister. She could not totally accept the maternal Ysran offered her because she still felt that of her first parents. She could not help lashing out in pain and anger because she had left her most precious person. She had died and left her beautiful baby girl in the world, alone.

She had grown up on her family's vineyard in California wine country; riding horses, camping out, and doing her parent's crunchy granola, hippy crafts. She had loved every second of it.

She had always wanted to help people, so after graduating from high school, she became a certified EMT and worked her way through undergrad and was in the midst of her 2nd year of her emergency medicine residency when she was killed.

She was driving to pick her daughter Cheyenne up from her parent's house when it happened. It was dark on a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere when a truck began to tailgate her. The driver blew their horn aggressively as if she already wasn't driving 20 miles of the speed limit. The truck behind her decided to pass on her left when going into a blind turn when a car came flying around the corner. Instead of the truck slowing down to fall back behind her, the truck barrelled forward, trying to make the gap. Aalia screamed as she saw what was about to happen. The back end of the truck clipped the front end of her car with enough force that it forced her to spin out across the double yellow, right into the path of the other car. She had been alive for a moment, and all she could taste was blood and all she could see were stars. But the last thing she heard was the squeal of tires as the driver that caused the accident fled the scene.

She cried as she thought of her sweet girl, growing up without her mother. She cried for her family that she loved dearly. She cried for her friends that she would never see again. She closed her eyes, accepting her fate.

But then she opened them, and she thought that she had a stroke. She came into this new world scared and angry, and she doubted she would be anything but for the rest of her days.

'Ysran deserved better than a bitter, broken soul given a new form. She deserved a kind child that loved their mother. But she got me instead,' she had respected Ysran, it was clear she tried her best with Meena, trying to understand the anger that she held and to love her regardless.

"I'm sorry," Meena whispered as she looked at Ysran's body, her gaze solemn. As she paid her respects to her second mother, Meena began to think, 'I probably can't stay here for much longer. The people aren't fond of me, and I don't like them much either. But where can I go?'

Originally, she had thought that she was thrown back to the middle ages with the lack of regular bathing and electricity. It was only after Ysran had taught her of their home did alarm bells go off.

"Lemonwood is not the whole world, my desert night. We're but one place of many in the sands of Dorne," Ysran had cooed to her when she was about 4. She started and stared at her new mother as she continued to tell her the story of Princess Nymeria's conquest of Dorne and the entrance of Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros a little less than a century ago.

She had wanted to scream. Everyone knew that Westeros was a shithole. She couldn't think of a single person in her past life that said that they'd want to live in Westeros if they by chance landed in the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire.

"Can we move?" were the words that flew out of her mouth unbidden.

Her mother chuckled, "Where to, my desert night?"

She paused for a moment, trying to puzzle out how to say it without showing that she knew far more than she should, "Braavos? Or Yi Ti? I heard about those places at the market.

Ysran's laughing eyes crinkled around the edges, "Oh is that so?" she said as she placed her dexterous hand on Meena's head full of dark curls. "Maybe one day when I'm brave enough."

One day would never come for Ysran. She began to rapidly lose weight and had difficulty keeping food down. She was constantly tired and the fevers never went away. She had treated Ysran for everything she could with the medicine available to her, but nothing had worked. Her second mother had called it a wasting sickness, and Meena had a fair idea of what plagued her but in the end there was nothing she could do to help besides ease the pain.

'Maybe someday will be sooner than I think,' Meena contemplated her next move. She knew it would have to be soon — Robert's Rebellion was on the horizon, the Tourney at Harrenhal would be in the next year or so, and after that the War of the Five Kings would tear Westeros apart.

'There's nothing for me in Dorne, and the rest of Westeros is a death trap. I'll go east.'

Thank you for giving this a chance! I'm going a little stir crazy in the house and need another outlet other than my senior thesis. This fic will hold true to the book's timeline versus the show. If you see anywhere that I can improve (technically and otherwise) I'd love to hear your thoughts. Take care!