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Last Price: Chapter Three
Death makes a deal with Shiva
The bargaining was tough. Both agreed on that at least. Though Death had considered the experience quite enlightening. And Shiva had admonished him for using such language in the context of material gain. Death shrugged. Gods could be so damn prickly.
Shiva had transported Death on his faithful bull, Nandi, to his home in the Himalayas: Mount Kailash. Death eased himself into a squatting position, close to the mouth of the cave, taking care to avoid the sharply honed stalagmites that protruded in various places from the rock floor. Close by a woman leaned over a crackling log fire, stirring a large, black iron cooking pot that, by a crude apparatus of sticks bound together by animal sinew, hung above the flames. Wood smoke billowed out from the fire, mingling with the aroma of cooking spices. The cave floor was strewn with furs and colourful rugs that gave a welcome break to the pointy bits of rock.
Shiva casually introduced him to Parvati. Death gazed wretchedly on her beauty. For the first time in dying memory, he wished he were more than just bone. He wondered about the pleasures of carnal desire from being of flesh. But he didn’t understand. Notwithstanding Parvati’s beauty how could a god indulge in something that was so human? So basic? So, animal?
