Jarrad DeGruy
Bio
Black Indigenous 22 year old writer and healer from Bulbancha (Stolen Chitimacha Land now called New Orleans)
Pronouns - She/Her/They/Them
Stories (2/0)
The Thunder Buffalo
The Thunder Buffalo There was a final rain, many years before this story begins, that almost everyone took for granted because they had no clue it would be the last. The people of Thunder Valley grew bitter at the parched ground, for they had not taken the time to cherish the smell, the colors, and the sensations of a pouring sky. Their children grew up thirsty for water, but their parent’s longing descriptions of the rainy seasons of the past were all there was to quench the gargle of dry stomachs and the crack of parched lips. The fertile soil once yielded ample crops and grazing for livestock, but the years passed, and lives of people and animals with it. Thunder Valley shifted in a single season from green plains to brown and barren terrain. The people of thunder valley were forced to steadily migrate, and the only one who remained was a cattle herder who lived near a well, not quite dried up but hardly full.
By Jarrad DeGruy3 years ago in Fiction
Healing Sword
I step onto a yard of grass, green and fresh with the rain of the day before, and I press my bare toes into it. I greet the sycamore whose roots coil below before turning to the light of the sun, rising in the east, and the warmth embraces me like a friend missed for some time. Mockingbird perches at the top of the electric pole, preening her feathers in the dawn light before singing her old song, and I quiet my mind to listen. Her songs are indigenous like me, and I always keep my ears tuned for pieces of shared language and stories about the land, and our ancestors which her kind remembers, but my people have forgotten. I take a deep breath and thank God for waking me, and for the cool of the air which I know will not last as the day progresses and the sun’s caress will turn into a harsh beating. I grip the sheath of my sword, draw the blade free and raise it to a sky tinted gold. I present my weapon to the heavens and summon energy from the high cosmos, down to my dimension to course through the tip of my sword, down the length of the gleaming blade and into me. I proceed into movement, wielding my weapon with the surety of an extended limb.
By Jarrad DeGruy3 years ago in Earth
