Let's talk musically first.
I'm not hearing many dynamics, peaks and valleys, highs and lows -- and those are needed to be able to convey something to the listener. These are the things that show us, not tell us, about what emotional frequency the characters are going through. This sets the tone for the rest of my review.
Amaya's Overlook. The writing of this piece does bring to mind enka songs. Those can be quite emotional when we hear those highs and lows in the dynamics. Especially towards the end there are moments where the piano is intended to feel quite glittery and wondrous. The lack of dynamics hampers this, unfortunately. The feelings you are describing in the text, of wonder and adventure before embarking, are not coming across to me due to the flatness of it all.
Whiskers Before The Storm has some interesting synth choices that do convey that we're entering a perilous area. Those synths, presumably because they're out of the box like that, do have some soft-loud to them. Some of them actually do give shivers down the spine (in this case, a VERY good thing). The rest of your instrumentation, unfortunately, doesn't, again because of the flatness of the dynamics.
I feel like you've written something that has so much potential to truly tug at the heartstrings, if they are given their proper place in the mix of instruments, if they occupy a certain dynamic range. Play with them note velocities more. If your instruments don't allow you to do that, consider volume automation graphs. Consider, on top of that, things like EQ and reverb on your more basic instruments -- they do currently sound quite MIDI-ish, and do need that polish to shine. If that doesn't work, maybe some free VSTs might work? (BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover and Berlin Free Orchestra, as well as the default piano sound on Soundpaint, are all going for free and all hold up quality wise, but you'd also still need to know your EQ / volume graphs / etc to get them to talk to each other.)