Now it really was dawn, that cusp of the day that belonged to no one except the seagulls in Morpork docks, the tide that rolled in up the river, and a warm turnwise wind that added a smell of spring to the complex odor of the city.

Death sat on a bollard, looking out to sea. He had decided to stop being drunk. It made his head ache.

He’d tried fishing, dancing, gambling and drink, allegedly four of life’s greatest pleasures, and wasn’t sure that he saw the point. Food he was happy with—Death liked a good meal as much as anyone else. He couldn’t think of any other pleasures of the flesh or, rather, he could, but they were, well, fleshy, and he couldn’t see how it would be possible to go about them without some major bodily restructuring, which he wasn’t going to contemplate. Besides, humans seemed to leave off doing them as they grew older, so presumably they couldn’t be that attractive.

Death began to feel that he wouldn’t understand people as long as he lived.

The sun made the cobbles steam and Death felt the faintest tingling of that little springtime urge that can send a thousand tons of sap pumping through fifty feet of timber in a forest.

The seagulls swooped and dived around him. A one-eyed cat, down to its eighth life and its last ear, emerged from its lair in a heap of abandoned fish boxes, stretched, yawned, and rubbed itself against his legs. The breeze, cutting through Ankh’s famous smell, brought a hint of spices and fresh bread.

Death was bewildered. He couldn’t fight it. He was actually feeling glad to be alive, and very reluctant to be Death.

I MUST BE SICKENING FOR SOMETHING, he thought.