The vision was not only fire and weapons. As Arjuna's heart pounded, he began to notice the beauty of it too.

Around the boundless form hung garlands — not garlands of marigolds from a temple, but garlands woven of light, of blossoms that had never grown in any garden, each petal glowing with its own colour. The robes that draped the great being shimmered like the sky at every hour at once: dawn-pink, noon-gold, dusk-violet, midnight-blue, all flowing together and never still.

And there was a fragrance. Even far away, even through the strangeness of his divine eye, Arjuna seemed to breathe it in — a sweetness like sandalwood and rain and every flower of the world mixed into one, the scent of something holy.

"He is anointed, my king," Sanjaya murmured to Dhritarashtra, "the way we anoint a god in the temple at festival time — but with fragrances of heaven that no merchant has ever sold. He is made of wonders. Not one wonder, not a hundred. Every marvel that has ever made a person gasp is gathered into this single shining being."

But the thing that pressed hardest on Arjuna's mind was this: the form had no behind.

When you stand before a person, you see their face, and their back is hidden. When you walk around a statue, you must move to see its other side. But this God faced every way at once. Whichever direction Arjuna looked, up, down, left, right, behind himself, a face was already there, already turned toward him, already gazing back with calm, endless eyes.

There was nowhere he could go where the God was not already looking. Nowhere to hide, but also — Arjuna would understand this only later — nowhere he could ever be alone or unseen or forgotten. The one who faces every way is the one who never loses sight of you.

"Endless," Sanjaya said softly. "Facing everywhere. The shining One. My king, I am only a charioteer, and I am watching the whole of heaven stand in a single body."