Arjuna stood in his chariot and looked out over the army — and for the first
time, he saw it differently.
All morning the great host had seemed to him a thing of dread. The endless
rows of warriors. The forest of raised spears. The war-banners snapping in
the wind, each one bright with the emblem of a mighty house — a lion, a
boar, a serpent, a sun. The gleam of gold armour. The thunder of the
war-drums. It had all pressed down on him like a coming storm.
But Krishna had just spoken. *Wherever you see something glorious, beautiful,
or mighty, know that it has come from a fragment of My splendour.*
And now Arjuna looked again, and the dread fell away, and in its place came
wonder.
There — Bhishma's banner, golden palm-tree on silver, lifting in the
breeze. A spark of the divine. There — the deep, brave heart of a young
soldier in the front line, gripping his shield, frightened but standing
firm. A spark of the divine. The morning sun catching ten thousand
spearheads at once, so the whole field flashed like the sea. The strength
in the legs of the war-elephants. The clear high note of a conch. The skill
in the hands of the charioteers. Each gleam of gold, each brave breath,
each beautiful and mighty thing —
— all of it, Arjuna saw now, was one small spark thrown off from a single
endless fire.
He turned to look at his friend at the reins. Krishna was watching him with
the faintest smile, as if he knew exactly what Arjuna was seeing.
"It is all You," Arjuna said softly. "Every banner. Every brave man. Every
gleam of gold on this whole terrible, beautiful field. Not one of them shines
with its own light. They are all... sparks. From You."
"From a fragment of Me," Krishna agreed. "Only a fragment."
Arjuna looked back at the army, and it no longer seemed a coming storm. It
seemed, strangely, like a sky full of stars in daylight — countless small
fires, each one a tiny piece of one great light he could not see but could
now feel everywhere, in everything, at once.
The wind lifted the banners. The sparks flickered and flashed across the
plain. And Arjuna, for a moment, was not afraid at all.
