"... to know everything about my biology that a genie my age should know, and how my previous wish affected my family history." The stone flared white, and this time Jon could actually sense the magic in the stone as she touched it. It was similar to the energy running through out her, but, while her internal energy welt like a merry campfire, the power contained in the stone was a blazing inferno. She sat back down on her bed rubbing her temples as the stone filled her brain with new knowledge.
The first thing that came to her was a reason for the gender change; it turned out that all Djinn were in actuality female. Legends of male Djinn tended to be a result of early patriarchal societies purposely making some edits to their interactions with the decidedly female race. Instead of needing to exchange genetic information to reproduce, two djinn who were deeply in love could mix their essences via magic and creating a new djinn daughter. It was possible for Djinn to have children with humans and other species, but the result would almost always be a Djinn child, half-Djinn not really being a thing.
Where humans were composed mostly of water, Djinn were creatures of air and fire, arguably a type of elemental, although there was debate on the subject. That explained how bouncy and floaty she felt, alongside her smoke bottom, which she mentally flicked to turn into legs as the knowledge of how to do so filtered in. It seemed the partially vapor form was her most natural state, but Djinn bodies were naturally malleable to a degree, and learning to make legs to pass in human society was something most of them learned as toddlers. That said, it wasn't like she really needed to put much weight on them, which was why most Djinn appeared to glide gracefully even when they were nominally using legs. Huh, I guess mom won't get blisters wearing those heels.
She could also entirely shift into vapor or smoke and her kind often did so when they retreated into their vessel. That was what the gold and blue lacquered lamp was, Jasmine's vessel. Each Djinn was intrinsically linked to their vessel, which they each manifested as newborns. The shape was largely dependent on the Djinn in question, but young Djinn tended to have shapes that resembled their mothers' vessels and lamps were among the most common. Learning to change your vessel shape was a more complicated use of magic and typically wasn't done until the Djinn had reached maturity. Damaging the vessel would also hurt the Djinn, and so they were fiercely protected, since it was essentially like having a vital organ external to your body. Jasmine's own was heavily warded by her family, and pretty much never left her room.
Djinn were among the creatures most attuned to magic, indeed being partially composed of it. They had both internal mana, and the ability to channel ambient magic under certain circumstances. That was where wish granting came in; when using magic for themselves they pulled on their internal poser, but by granting a wish for a non-djinn they could channel external power, taking a small tax of it for themselves. This was how Djinn grew their internal stores; they didn't need to grant wishes to survive, but it helped to grow their personal maximum store and increase the total amount they could channel. That said, it wasn't healthy to grant too many wishes in close succession, and doing so could have negative effects on the Djinn doing so. In short, the more wishes they granted, the greater their personal magic became and the bigger wishes they could grant. At her age she could only grant minor wishes, but she was growing more powerful at a healthy rate.
That was another thing, age. She'd thought her mom now looked young for her age, but hadn't realized how right she was. Djinn lived for centuries and didn't age physically past their twenties, including her mother who was apparently over 250 now. She was still 16, but now knew she was looking at a much longer life ahead of her. However, Djinn weren't immortal, they could be killed and although they were very long lived, they would eventually pass on of old age. When that happened, the Djinn essentially retreated into and merged with their vessel, becoming a precious stone, or Djinn Heart. The stone would be a receptacle for the magic the Djinn had accumulated in life and could be used to grant wishes. However, since the Djinn was no longer living, the magic would not replenish and if all of it was used up the stone would crumble to ash. Many Djinn also believed that they lived on in their Hearts as a sort of afterlife, so it was generally considered taboo to actually use the magic of the stones outside of emergencies, since it could destroy them. She realized with mounting horror that the so-called wishing stone in her hand was in fact the Heart of a dead Djinn, and an immensely powerful one at that considering the scale of the wishes it could grant. It had turned her INTO a Djinn and rewrote reality all around her, something that was possibly beyond any living Djinn to do; she could only thank the spirits that she hadn't fully depleted the stone.
And, as she'd realized, changing into a Djinn hadn't been a zero sum wish. In addition to information on her new biology, new memories of her new family history were coming to her. Her name was now Jasmine Pyra Galenos, daughter of Lydia Galenos and Cassandra Galenos. Lydia was the previous Linda Gibson, who was also transformed into a Djinn by the wish, but Cassandra was not a transformed Roger Gibson, Jon's father who had left their family when he was in middle school. Cassandra was a pre-existing single Djinn from the old reality. Cassandra came from a prestigious line of Djinn originating in Greece, and Cassandra had emigrated to the New World back when the future United States were still the thirteen colonies. Lydia, by contrast, had lived the majority of her life on the island of Cyprus, where the Medii family originated. She only came to the states in the 1970s, where she would eventually meet and fall in love with Cassandra, leading to Jasmine and her little sisters, Zoe and Melia.
The family still lived in Lakeview, however there were some notable differences. Where Linda had been a paralegal, Lydia was instead a full blown lawyer and partner in the firm. Given their long lifespans, it wasn't uncommon for Djinn to try their hands at multiple different professions during their lifetime, but Lydia had been in the legal profession for the last several decades. Cassandra, meanwhile, worked as the head curator of the American Antiquities Museum, near the Ivy University campus. Both positions were quite senior for women as young as they appeared, but perception altering magic was quite useful in smoothing things over.
Lydia's ancestry was also different as well, of course. Hiram Madison, the grandfather who had originally sent the stone to Jon, had now been Helen Medii, and so on back up the family line. Although, perhaps to conserve magical power, rather than transform her entire family line, the Heart had instead simply made Helen the daughter of the prexisting Medii family of Djinn. Lydia had taken the Galenos family name due to Cassandra's family being something like nobility in the magical world. It wasn't a formal distinction, but the Galenos derived a certain amount of clout from being descended from Asteria Galenos, The Starry Djinn. Asteria, who was Jasmine's three times great grandmother, was possibly the most powerful Djinn to ever live. She'd lived back during the time of Cyrus the Great, and was responsible for quite a few legends from that era. Also notable about her was that her Heart, noted for it's blood red hue contrasted with an inner white light, had gone missing shortly after her death.
By the gods, Hiram Madison found Asteria's Heart Jasmine realized with a start. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought of a human touching her ancestors remains, in spite of the fact that she herself had been human a few minutes ago. She felt momentarily guilty, she'd effectively wished her way into the family of the woman who's remains her original grandfather had unknowingly desecrated. Hiram had been an archeologist and must have come across the missing stone on one of his digs. Jasmine knew the man wouldn't have known what it was, but with her knew cultural context it felt sacrilegious to misuse a Djinn's Heart, particularly a family member's.
Slowly Jasmine's head stopped spinning, (she was finding it difficult to fully think of herself as Jon after the last wish even though she hadn't fully gained her memories of this world beyond those relating to her ancestry) and she looked at the stone in her hand with new reverence. Okay, so apparently I'm holding the Heart of my great-great-great grandmother and possibly the strongest Djinn to ever live. What in the world do I do with it?
