Overworld:

Allison Griffin, eldest daughter of the Griffin family, refused to marry the man she was betrothed to. He was 20 years her senior, he was boring, he drank and gambled, and even his name, Willard, sounded like dullard.

But he was from a rich family and her father liked him so she had no choice in the matter.

She had met him a couple times growing up, yes, growing up! And he had always been the most drunk out of her father's acquaintances. He wasn't a mean drunk, its just that combined with his disinterest in education or the arts, he was more of a blob than a man. He was easily entertained by dogfights and trained his own dogs for them, and seemed to do nothing but tell bad jokes and play cards. She's pretty sure the only reason he hadn't lost more on betting was because he was never the only one drunk while playing.

Once she learned she was betrothed to him, she had been pushed to conversate with the man, and wasn't surprised to find out their interests were incompatible, but what had made her stalk off was that he not only didn't seem to understand any references she made, but when she tried to explain the plot of one of her favorite books, he had cut her off mid sentence. Rude much?

If she was anyone else she'd likely be fine with Willard. Despite all that she loathed about him, he had been entertaining enough with his jokes and his dogs were something he seemed passionate about, but a worse match couldn't have been made.

As a result, she had decided to skip town.

------

Aumeria:

Vira Kozel was a lot of things. Child of Lord Giles Kozel, grandchild of the great matriarch Cynthia Kozel, and future leader of the bovid demons, but the first thing people noticed about them was that they were a chimera.

They caught glances from their family at times, their dad sometimes looked expectant of... something, but Vira had caught their grandmother looking disappointedly at them out of the corner of their eye. It's not like Vira didn't know why, Vira could assume it was because of any combination of things, like their status as a chimera, the fact that for a mix of bovid and corvid they had gotten the short end of the stick with most of their combined traits (no wings being the biggest one). It could also be Cynthia's distain for Vira's dead mother, who Vira never really knew. Or it could be how they didn't seem to click with their peers.

Maybe it was just them, but Vira had always been able to see through people's acts.

Every heir or child of a noble bloodline was shouldering the weight of their respective families' expectations, but most of them turned to attempting to one up eachother or vie for power by taking it from those weaker or "lesser".

That's why, with military academy coming up, Vira was starting to dread it. Part of being a leader was making connections, and Vira wasn't looking forward to that aspect at all. They'd probably do better as someone's 2nd in command than as the one calling all the shots. The weight of leadership with all those eyes on you and expectation, both positive and negative, seemed draining. Vira had already seen what it'd done to their dad. No wonder he always looked so expectant of them, he'd gone through the exact same things from his parents.