#He thinks his placement is utter bullshit and also he's not repentant about exiling the kittens.

[bonefall]

so for minnowmouse (a personal fav absolute background relationship of mine) i like to think that INITIALLY the df was proposed to them as a space for them to meet without getting caught- plus less walking, it’s not like thunder and river are easy to sneak to

most likely some background ancient df warrior got them together, like snowtuft or houndleap or something. a cat who they’ve never heard of and have no reason to distrust, maybe even further convincing them they’re in the right. after all, if starclan themselves are helping out their relationship, it must be okay, right?

but then their df sponsors start to manipulate them. feeding into their anger, their ambition, their disillusionment. which eventually leads to them spending more time in training sessions than with each other as the df further takes hold

I'm definitely going to use the reasoning that the Dark Forest is a place they can easily meet-- but I'm looking for a secondary motivation as well. The Lake Map is reworked giving them a place they actually can sneak to (when RiverClan controls the northern delta), and besides... meeting in HELL sounds like it's kind of a bad plan.

Unless they were tricked like Crookedjaw into thinking the DF cats were StarClan warriors but... I don't think either one of them is naiive enough, especially not Mousewhisker.

I do like the idea of giving them a sort of 'Patron' though, like the way Ivypool has Hawkfrost as a mentor. Maybe it was Mapleshade herself? She'd be good at convincing them that it's fine they're seeing each other, by citing how the tragedy of her kittens caused the Code to change.

They would have Mapleshade as their patron, and then they'd either both get battle mentors or just have an extra in addition to Mapleshade. In this rewrite, Frecklewish, Oakstar, Ravenwing, AND Appledusk are all in the DF, I should pick one or two of them as irony.

(and also to show that there are lots of different cats in the dark forest, not all of them there for fair reasons.)