The night before

He looked up at the sky.

So many of them. Stars. All around him. Like a blanket that the earth wraps itself with.

There were so many of them that it did not feel right to think of it as a miracle. It was such a good thought to instead think of it as a happenstance. As a random occurrence. How awesome would it be if the universe were a serendipitous occurrence, if all this was pure chance, that mistakes could be so pleasantly designed.

He turned towards his companion.

"Is it all pure chance then?"

"....". His companion stared at the sky - lost in thought.

"They say you know everything. Do you know? Do you know if this is all randomness, if this is all a happenstance?"

"I don't know"

"...."

"Tomorrow might be our last day together. Tomorrow we might disappear into oblivion. I want you to know now, that I am no incarnation."

Arjuna looked at him and smiled. "....I know you're not an incarnation. But they don't. They all think you are. That is all that matters."

Krishna smiled.

Arjuna kept staring at the sky. It might be his last night. All this might end tomorrow. Would he then rise to the heavens as his forefathers said he would? Would he then find eternal peace?

"You may not..." - Krishna interjected. "It might all be a lie to make us comfortable with our own mortality..."

"You read my thoughts, cowherd. You are not devoid of all the powers that the world would want to attribute to you". Arjuna looked at his friend, who now had a sly smile on his face.

"Vyasa is already writing this down you know. I read his manuscript. He...er...seems to have overdone by godliness."

Arjuna laughed. Like a man unaware of his mortality. "I read that too. He mentions you have 16000..." He burst out laughing before he could finish his sentence.

They were both laughing now.

Arjuna looked at the horizon. He could see the battlefield at a distance. "I would have thought it would have been more inspiring for people to know that we were men, Krishna. You and me. That despite our mortality, and our frailty, we did what we could."

Krishna looked down at his feet. "Inspiration is not what they are looking for Partha". The confusion was apparent in his eyes now. "They look for hope. They look for an easy way out. They think that elevating a success to a level beyond themselves would absolve them of any need to rise above their limitations."

A meteor passed by. A tiny one. The soldiers standing at a distance guarding the troops were pointing it out to each other. "It is an omen", they said. "What does it mean though?". "It means we're winning you idiot", said one guard to another, "Krishna made the star fall to tell the Kauravas that their reign is about to end".

Arjuna looked at Krishna. They could not stop laughing.