Veeravati, daughter of Vedasharma and Leelavati of Indraprasthapur and only sister of seven brothers, keeps her first Karva Chauth fast at her parents' home and faints before moonrise. Her brothers set a lamp behind a sieve in a peepal tree and tell her the moon is up. She offers water and eats; a hair is in the first bite, she sneezes at the second, and at the third comes news of her husband's death. Indrani tells her to keep every Chauth fast for a year and the next Karva Chauth to the end; she does, and her husband revives.
Karva Chauth vrat katha (Drik Panchang; Webdunia Hindi; vow-book retellings); Karva Chauth, Wikipedia
Draupadi, anxious while Arjuna is away at the Nilgiri, asks Krishna what she can do. Krishna tells her Shiva once taught Parvati the Kartika fast and tells her of Veeravati. In this telling Parvati meets the grieving girl and revives the husband with a drop of blood from her little finger. Draupadi keeps the fast and Arjuna returns safe.
A frame story; Parvati, not Indrani, revives the husband.
Karva Chauth vrat katha (Drik Panchang; Webdunia Hindi; vow-book retellings)
Sources: Karva Chauth vrat katha (Drik Panchang; Webdunia Hindi; vow-book retellings); Karva Chauth, Wikipedia
While Indra hides in a lotus stalk, the human king Nahusha rules heaven, demands Shachi, has sages carry his litter and is cursed to fall as a serpent.
In the Bhavishya Purana Krishna teaches Yudhishthira the Shravana full moon rite: Shachi, called Indrani, tied a raksha on Indra's wrist, and Shukra told the demon king Bali to wait a year until its power ran out. In the Vratraj telling Indra has lost a twelve-year war and Brihaspati prescribes the rite. The priest's verse names Bali.
Kali, drunk with the blood of the demons she has killed, rules the banyan forest of Tiruvalangadu and terrifies it, until Shiva comes and she challenges him to dance. He drops an earring, picks it up with his toe and lifts his foot to his ear, and she cannot follow. At Chidambaram she loses the same contest and is sent to the edge of the town.
The demon Daruka can be killed by no man, so Shiva brings out of himself a goddess: Kali from the poison in his throat in the Linga Purana, Bhadrakali from his third eye in Kerala. She kills Daruka, and her anger is cooled only when Shiva lies in her path as a crying baby.
Forbidden by Shiva to go to her father Daksha's sacrifice, Sati turns dark and terrible; when Shiva runs, she stands before him in every direction in ten forms, names them, and goes. Oral tellings put the same ring of ten round Shiva when he tries to leave Parvati or Kali.
Shiva and Parvati must choose between their two sons.
Murugan marches from Kailash to the seashore at Tiruchendur, sends Veerabahu to offer peace, fights Surapadman's brothers and sons for five days and on the sixth splits the demon, hiding as a mango tree, with his lance; the two halves become his peacock and his cock banner.
Mena's long worship, the birth of the mountain's daughter at midnight in spring, Narada's reading of the strange husband in her palm, and the girl who answers Shiva when her father cannot.