About half a day's swim downstream, and the land became forage-able again. Of course, this is also where the fish started thinning out. And I don't need to tell you how much having two fatigue reduces your options.
My lungs coated with silt, I spent about half an hour or so just coughing there by the bank. What I really needed was some ability to take that dirt into my Inventory, which due to recent excess had grown huge. But... again, it was something which wasn't going to happen today.
I sneezed out a glob of phlegm and considered. Oh, no, not about the oath of revenge. THAT had been done downstream. I didn't know the order in which I'd kill Crueler, Blackheart, and Wicked Woman, but the plan was to just sneak into their tent at night and sever their heads. Transformation into an uruk child was relatively easy, or would be with the nutrition I could gather over five days. Three, if I found the reagents for a Plainswalker Healing potion.
The original plot DID have Rhishi actually talk to the otherwise predatory plains cats. And then I thought about it from the cat's point of view, and the whole plot required them to be so very stupid and gullible. Or bored; I've seen cats do stupid and suicidal things when bored.
But my point was that it broke verisimilitude; it broke the concept that the cats were thinking, independant beings. And so I thought a bit about what they wanted, and how much, and how they were planning to get that. And there just wasn't anything Rhishi could offer tastier than himself.
So... rewrite.
As always, thank you for your readership. It's worth staying awake late at night for.