Before the sun, before the mountains, before even the first morning, there was a dark and shoreless ocean. Nothing moved upon it. No bird crossed it, no wind ruffled it. It stretched on and on, with no edge anywhere.

And floating on that ocean was a serpent.

He was no ordinary snake. His name was Ananta, which means "the one with no end," and the name fit him perfectly. If you tried to follow his coils you would never reach his tail. If you counted his hoods you would lose count, for there were a thousand of them, spread wide like a great glowing canopy. Each hood shimmered with its own jewel, so that the whole serpent glittered like a sky full of stars laid out flat upon the water.

On the soft, shining coils of Ananta lay the god Vishnu, fast asleep, resting between the making of one world and the next. The serpent did not mind the weight. He held the sleeping god the way a calm lake holds the moon — easily, without strain, as if it were nothing at all.

And it was not only Vishnu that Ananta carried. Far above, balanced on his countless hoods, rested the whole round earth, with all its mountains and forests and oceans and the creatures yet to be born. When the earth grew heavy, Ananta only shifted a little, and people far below felt the ground tremble. But he never let go. He never tired. He had been holding the worlds since before time began, and he would hold them long after.

"Among all the serpents," Krishna told Arjuna on the battlefield, "I am Ananta — the endless one. Whatever upholds and never gives way, whatever has no beginning and no end, that is My splendour."

Arjuna thought of the great snake holding up the whole earth without complaint, and he understood. Some things in the world hold steady so that everything else can rest. The one who never lets go, who endures past every ending — there, Krishna shines.