At fourteen, Danae of Stravos was right on the cusp of womanhood and the poor girl was fairly certain that she wasn’t ready for this change in her life. Her mother was attempting to prepare her for her debut at court, but Danny was pretty sure that it was going to be an absolute disaster. After all, she was nothing like the gossip queens that Circenia and Chara already were and it was more than clear from the never-ceasing questions about this upcoming milestone from those who didn’t really know Danae that they expected that the youngest of the Stravos brood would be just the same as the women that came before her. From the girl’s perspective, everyone in the entirety of Athenia was expecting her to be some sort of confident queen from the moment she stepped into the ballroom. This was never going to be the case.

Underneath the naturally haughty surface image that came with being a Stravos, Danae was an insecure girl who felt more at home alone in her father’s study than she had ever felt at one of her mother’s many parties. She was a girl who had been cursed with the mind of her father -- making her the sort of child who didn’t want to pretend to enjoy hosting grand galas or doing anything outside of her two main hobbies; reading and economics. Despite her mother’s best efforts, Danae might be able to explain the vast intricacies of international supply and demand, but she couldn’t say anything about a dress beyond the fact that the color was pretty. If her unladylike interests weren’t bad enough, poor Danae had also inherited her mother’s stubbornness streak. That meant that every time the Xanthos Princess tried to impart her knowledge upon the daughter who was clearly not cut out for the expectations that society was going to place upon her as a nearly-grown woman ended in a battle of wills.

For Danae, it was utterly exhausting to deal with on the nearly daily basis that her mother brought it up. As she no way of properly grasping the importance of mastering these womanly subjects, Danae couldn’t fathom why her mother just didn’t give up as she did ages ago. She was never going to be that pretty little doll that Circenia wanted her to be. It would be easier for everyone if her mother just accepted this and allowed Danae to pursue the interests that captured her attention without mean-spirited commentary about how following in her father’s footsteps was not an acceptable path for the youngest child who had the misfortune of being born as a daughter.

As the two women were just as stubborn as each other, it made it utterly impossible for the two of them to get along civilly. It was a sad situation really as the mother and daughter continuously failed to come together and be a family like they should have a long time ago -- but that was just not going to happen when the two of them always thought that they were the ones who were solely in the right. There was no such thing as compromise in the Stravos.

Even though Danae had a strong-will, she held no power in her family’s home. Not only was she the youngest child -- but she was a daughter too meaning that she had to bend to the will of her mother more often than not. As this was something that Danae did not want to do as the immense pressure cooker that the two of them were under with the girl’s fifteenth birthday being only a few short weeks away, Danae had taken to the habit of disappearing from the Stravos manor for a few hours everyday -- just so she could avoid her mother. That was why the youngest Stravos was here in the library of Athenia’s University rather than in her room back in the Stravos manor.

It was a cliche thing for her to say, but the center of all Athenian knowledge really was a perfect home away from home for Danae during this tumultuous period of her life. There was no way that Danae could truly explain the comfort she felt knowing that no matter how much Circenia nagged her, Danae could always escape to this place where she could lose herself in the histories of Grecians long dead and learn more tools of her preferred trade through their triumphs and mistakes. These books weren’t the sort of stories that noble girls were supposed to read as they weren’t overly pretty or filled with happy endings, but Danae would like to see anyone try to stop her from reading them. Her ambitious nature made it impossible for her to enjoy such trivial things as love stories -- they were simply boring to the girl who was experiencing an uphill battle in order to enjoy the hobbies that she loved. Plus it also didn’t hurt that she was one of the few noblegirls that didn’t see what was so appealing about boys. Why should she when she had to live with the knowledge that one day a man was going to come along and make her his wife, taking her away from everything that she had ever known?

In truth, as Danae had yet to have a husband, the fourteen-year-old girl wasn’t supposed to be able to freely wander the rows of scrolls lining the walls. That right was normally reserved for men and the lucky ladies that had husbands who valued their wives being able to think for themselves. Unmarried girls like herself were considered too fragile for these sorts of things. However, the first lesson Danae had learned as a Stravos was that money could make nearly any restriction go away and a hefty donation from her father was all that was needed to allow the Stravos girl to come and go from the library as she pleased -- even though the bribe hadn’t been enough to cover the stares that ensued whenever Danae and her personal guard Taureas appeared within the library stacks.

Danae was learning to ignore them as she wandered through the section she knew related to economics. It was a difficult thing to do, but at least it was made a tad bit easier by the interesting reading selections laid out before her. She could always feel the scholar’s eyes upon her, but she had every right to be here thanks to her father. That was enough at least to set that aside as she shuffled through the scrolls, trying to find something that she hadn’t read in some sort of capacity before. Little did the girl know that in her nervousness to get away from the nearby scholars that were likely judging the way that the girl who was a bit too short for the shelves was rummaging through the scrolls, that she was not the only one searching for something to read. In fact, there was someone else who was quickly approaching her to not reprimand her for being a young girl here in the library, but instead to kindly ask her to move so he could gather the things he needed for his classes as he had the luxury of being a student here at the university.

Danae wouldn’t know him, of course, she had never met Alastor of Vasiladon before in her life, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a chance of some sort of odd friendship between the two bookworms blossoming between the two of them as they chatted about their book selections… and you know, Danae asked for a little help in reaching the scrolls she wanted to collect. That was probably something she should tackle first if she didn’t want to accidentally break something which was not out of the realm of possibility for this little noble bookworm.