[occultation]

( @poppy )

Okay. Whew. Fadingsun had a lot of ideas bursting at the seams of his mind, and he needed to let the dam break so they could spill out. He'd been doing nothing but thinking since Larkstar had disappeared; he had several ideas for how he thought things should change around here.

He'd already voiced one of them during the meeting - that being the issue of Lionhearts - and Birdsnow's response had pleased him. He felt it fair to give Cherryswirl another chance; he supposed Nightspark deserved a chance, too, but that cat certainly wasn't high on the warrior's list.

Poking his head into Birdsnow's den, he announced his presence before walking in.

After the usual greetings had been exchanged, he dove into his ideas. "Right. I have quite a few ideas I'd like to share with you, about how we can make RiverClan better."

He sat down, curling his tail around his paws. "First, regarding Larkstar's plan to take Firefly Cove back. I think it's an awesome idea, but I don't think we're equipped to do it right now given what's happened. Maybe you've already thought about this and what I'm saying is redundant, but I thought I ought to say something since I don't want to see us throwing ourselves into a battle we aren't prepared for.

"However, the Clan still needs something to rally themselves around. In lieu of that, I'd like to propose a territory expansion. Nothing extreme, perhaps just a little bit of new territory. Push the outskirts border back a bit. It'll give us more space to hunt and look for herbs. I'm planning on doing some scouting soon, so I'll report back what I find. New territory can still be challenging and risky, but much less so than trying to fight a Clan over land. It's a good thing to hold us over until we're stable enough to try for the cove, I think."

His ear twitched. "Second, I think we need to start focusing on our status as a Clan of water more. Sure, we fish, but aside from fishing and recreational swimming we don't do a lot with the water. I think we should start focusing on water combat. Perhaps hold an event for everyone to practice fighting in the water; we're RiverClan cats, we should be able to use the water to our advantage in combat.

"Third, I think we should get a little more inventive with some of our punishments. Exiling, extra work, and demotions are great and definitely have a place, but I think we can put troublesome paws to greater work. There's tunnels that run beneath this Clan; we should actually make use of them. Make troublesome cats go down there, with supervision of course, and do the dirty work. Examine the tunnels, report what they find. Stabilize the tunnels that need it, and dig out new ones. It's dirty, hard work, and should make most cats think twice before acting like a jackass again."

He paused to take a few breaths and to let Birdsnow take in what he'd said so far.