At the end of a great age of the world, when even the gods had gone to sleep, the sage Markandeya found himself entirely alone.

There was no land. No sky. No sun, no moon, no stars. Wherever he looked, there was only water — a vast, dark, endless ocean stretching out beneath a starless nothing. Mountains he had once climbed, forests he had once walked, cities full of people — all of it had dissolved back into this silent sea. The whole world had melted away like a dream at waking.

Markandeya drifted on the dark water, more frightened than he had ever been. He was the only thing left in all of creation, and he did not understand how, or why, or what would happen next.

Then, far off across the black water, he saw a single point of soft light.

He swam toward it for what felt like a hundred years. And as he came close, he saw the strangest, most beautiful sight of his long life. Floating on the surface of the endless ocean was one green banyan leaf, curled like a tiny boat. And lying on that leaf, perfectly at peace, was a baby — a little dark child with a sweet, sleeping face, sucking gently on his own toe, glowing softly in the dark.

Markandeya could not understand it. How could a helpless infant be floating here, alone, when the whole world had ended?

As he stared, the child opened his mouth — just to yawn, perhaps — and Markandeya was swept inside.

And there, within the body of the little child, the sage saw everything. All the worlds that had ever been. The mountains and the forests, the cities and the rivers, the gods and the people, the sun and the moon and all the stars. Everything that had dissolved into the ocean was here, safe and whole, resting inside the sleeping child. The end of the world was not the end at all. It was only the universe breathing in, gathering itself back into the One it had come from.

Then Markandeya was outside again, weeping with wonder on the dark water. He understood at last. The child was the origin of all things and the resting place of all things — the place everything came from, and the place everything returned to. When the time was right, the little one would simply breathe the whole bright world out again.