Arjuna's brow furrowed. He had been listening with his whole heart, and yet something in Krishna's story would not fit, the way a too-large sandal will not slide onto the foot no matter how you push.

"Wait," he said slowly. "Wait. I have to ask you something, and I hope you will not be angry."

Krishna spread his hands, as if to say: ask.

"You told me you taught this path to Vivasvān, the sun, at the beginning of the world. The beginning, Krishna. Ages upon ages ago, before there were even kingdoms." Arjuna shook his head. "But I know you. I have known you since we were boys. We grew up in the same time. Your birth happened in our own days — I have heard the stories of your childhood, the butter you stole, the river you danced upon. You are not older than the sun."

He turned his palms upward, helpless and honest.

"So how can both things be true? You were born just a handful of years before me. The sun god was born when the world itself was new. How could you have taught him anything at the beginning, when your beginning came so long after his? It does not make sense to me. I am not trying to catch you out. I simply cannot make the two pieces meet."

He looked almost embarrassed to have said it. But he did not take it back, and Krishna loved him all the more for that.

For this is what a true friend does. He does not nod along and pretend to understand what he does not. He does not swallow a confusion just to seem wise. He lays his honest puzzlement out in the open, the way you might lay a tangled knot in a friend's lap and say, simply, "Help me with this. I cannot work it loose alone."

A small breeze crossed the chariot. Krishna's eyes were patient, almost delighted, like a teacher who has been waiting all along for exactly this question.

"Ah," he said. "Now we come to the heart of it."

And Arjuna leaned in to hear.