[The moment Gladion touches the ground, he explodes into motion.
Frantic, twitching, scrabbling motion. He unfurls and dives at the ground, hands scratching up the loose dirt, tail lashing like a whip until it strikes and pierces the soil. And then it jerks, spasmodically, sinking into the earth; ahead of it he crouches low and kneads at the dirt like a cat until black and brown and red and pink flecks dot his arms and his face and he's buried up to his (now unsheathed) thorns.
He calms after that. There's a few errant twitches from his tail, pulling back against the ground's grip as if it will draw up his meal faster. Nymph feeding is as slow as ever. Every few minutes, a pale little rootlet will surface somewhere along the ring and burrow right back down again. Every few more minutes, Gladion stirs, pushing his hands through the dirt before him in a sort of gently dutiful manner, until he unearths some wet pink scrap. These he plants one paw on directly, leans his weight onto it, and sways faintly back and forth.
And so it goes.
The first sign of a return to normal is a sigh. He's not quite done yet, but he's already exhausted his supply of pieces in front of him to paw morbidly at. And there's an intentionality to the sigh, a lucid emotion that doesn't need words.]
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Frantic, twitching, scrabbling motion. He unfurls and dives at the ground, hands scratching up the loose dirt, tail lashing like a whip until it strikes and pierces the soil. And then it jerks, spasmodically, sinking into the earth; ahead of it he crouches low and kneads at the dirt like a cat until black and brown and red and pink flecks dot his arms and his face and he's buried up to his (now unsheathed) thorns.
He calms after that. There's a few errant twitches from his tail, pulling back against the ground's grip as if it will draw up his meal faster. Nymph feeding is as slow as ever. Every few minutes, a pale little rootlet will surface somewhere along the ring and burrow right back down again. Every few more minutes, Gladion stirs, pushing his hands through the dirt before him in a sort of gently dutiful manner, until he unearths some wet pink scrap. These he plants one paw on directly, leans his weight onto it, and sways faintly back and forth.
And so it goes.
The first sign of a return to normal is a sigh. He's not quite done yet, but he's already exhausted his supply of pieces in front of him to paw morbidly at. And there's an intentionality to the sigh, a lucid emotion that doesn't need words.]