"There is something gentle I want you to understand about me," Krishna said, and his voice softened like the light over the river.

"Imagine a house on a green hill, with many doors. People come to it from every direction. One comes up the steep north path, panting, and knocks hard, almost angry, half-expecting to be turned away. Another comes skipping up the flower path from the south, singing. Another creeps to a side door, shy, afraid to even raise a hand to knock. And one comes quietly to the back, certain there is a friend inside."

Arjuna pictured it: the green hill, the many doors.

"Now — how should the one inside answer them?" Krishna asked. "Not all the same way. To the one who knocks in anger, a calm and steady welcome, to show there was nothing to fear. To the one who sings, an open door and a smile to match the song. To the shy one, a soft voice: *come in, come in, you are wanted here.* And to the trusting friend, simply an embrace."

He turned to Arjuna.

"That is how I meet people, Pārtha. However you come to me, that is exactly how I come to meet you. If you reach for me with love, I am love. If you reach for me with questions, I am the answer waiting. If you reach for me trembling, I am the steadiness under your feet. I do not stand at one door only and ignore the rest."

Arjuna thought of all the different people on the field — the bold and the frightened, the proud and the gentle, those who prayed and those who only wondered.

"And the roads?" he asked. "All those different paths up the hill?"

"Look closely," Krishna said, smiling, "and you will see that every path, however it twists, however far it wanders, is climbing toward the same house on the hill. People follow my way in all directions — yet it is always, in the end, my way. There is no road that does not lead home."

A flock of birds crossed the brightening sky, scattering in a dozen directions, and Arjuna noticed, with a small quiet wonder, that every one of them was somehow flying toward the sun.