Jinniyo

By Tami Veldura

Devi Pruya is supposed to learn the stories of her people, carry them in her belly and weave them like her mother and grandmother. But Devi doesn't think the stories are useful in the unrelenting desert she calls home. Until one special night when she weaves a story to stay alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Story Prism Studios
• Release date: Nov 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781941319604

Tami Veldura

Tami Veldura is an enby/aro/ace author of queer fiction. They have published short stories in anthologies Fresh Starts, Hauntings, Love Among The Thorns, Love Is Like A Box Of Chocolates, the magazine Galaxy’s Edge, and they are a contributing member of the scifi magazine Boundary Shock Quarterly. They publish new work every month, crossing every genre, but always featuring queer characters and found families.As S.T. Lynn, they write uplifting, sweet, and tropey fantasy fiction, featuring women front and center. Including fairy tales, elves, magic, and happy endings for young adults and young-at-heart.

Book preview

Jinniyo

By Tami Veldura

On the Eastern coast of the Irne Desert, on the northern tip of the triangle-shaped city of Taulut, Devi Pruya buried her dark, bare feet in the still-hot sands just outside her diya’s winter home. For months the clan had wound their way down from the mountains into the migrating dunes and across the scarred face of the land to arrive here at Taulut to trade myrrh and gossip with clan Meka, who lived here year-round. The city’s fine sandstone buildings, set in tessellated triangles, stood sentinel against the salty ocean; a world without water at their back and a world full of it at their front without a single fresh drop between them.

Devi let the hot sand filter down between her toes, listening to the laughter and tittering of the meeting inside, two diya gathered for the evening to share family histories and old tales the night before jinniyo. It was rude of Devi to step outside during the tellings but it would be worse for her mother to fetch her. Her mother was the keeper of their history, from their small diya up through the larger clan Okso, to the very Irne People. Rawena could recite all of the large myths: the birth of the people, the breaking clans—but she also kept the smaller stories. The tales of Devi’s great grandmother and twice great grandmother and all the grandmothers before her.

Devi had no interest in the histories. What good were the stories of the past if they couldn’t help with the present? Rawena’s favorite, the legend of Estelle who first birthed the people, spoke of the woman crossing to the spiritual plane and blessing her children with the touch of the djinn. Devi hadn’t met anyone who could commune with the djinn. They were wild, aggressive creatures that seeped into the Irne Desert from the parallel spirit plane and nothing more. They harassed the caravans on the brightest full moons,