Dying Wishes

<p><strong>*** Finalist for 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Speculative Fiction category ***</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>When I was seven my mother died. I struck a bargain with the Gods to bring her back to life.</strong></p><p><br></p><p>For thirteen years now I have served as a Harbinger of Death coaxing dying wishes out of mortals so that the God of Death may grant them <em>moksha</em> liberation from the cycles of birth and death.</p><p><br></p><p>The man about to die this evening claims he has nothing to offer me. He is dying a content man a rarity in our world.</p><p><br></p><p>But when the God of Death arrives to lead his soul away the man changes his mind about dying and flees planting on me something that is not quite a dying wish.</p><p><br></p><p>I only know I cannot trust any God with this secret. And that I'll pay an unbearable price for this concealment.</p><p><br></p><p>Yet again I underestimate how savagely the Gods can wound me. Even though one of them is supposedly my father who still doesn't know I exist.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Set in Burlington Ontario this contemporary fantasy novel weaves Hindu mythology and South Indian folklore into a quest for belonging across different worlds - the World of Mortals and the World of Gods India and Canada the past and the present the world outside and the one within.</em></p><p><br></p><p><em>It is an offering to lovers of whimsical worlds and heartbreaking prose and to anyone yearning to simply belong.<span></span></em></p>