A/N: So I only wrote one story for CoLu week this year (and it's grievously late) but it's an interesting one. I watched Kamisama Kiss recently and this is what came out of it.
Eternity was nothing to a Kami, especially to one as ancient as the Celestial Princess. She'd lived in her shrine for twenty score years, hearing the wishes and prayers of twenty generations of the citizens of Magnolia.
Four hundred years of wishes, four hundred years of different people coming and going.
Four hundred years since she had last seen the Celestial Palace…
Four hundred years since she had truly been happy.
Brown eyes dropped to the little girl standing outside the shrine, her hands clasped together and face scrunched up in concentration as she mouthed her words so as not to forget them, and she sighed. Beside her, Leo wrote the prayer down in one of his many notebooks. Again, the Princess sighed.
How many prayers had she heard and granted in the past four centuries? How many little girls had come to her shrine to ask for favors? How many women had whispered prayers for love, healthy babies, new jobs, happiness? Too many to count.
In the town of Magnolia, the shrine of the Celestial Princess was considered the place to go for love and family troubles. She had heard many a wish from lovesick girls begging the Kami of Star Hill for the boy they loved to just notice them.
No one wondered about the Kami and her love.
Her hands clenched her kimono tightly. Her love…
Her love had died in her arms, four hundred and thirty years ago, mere years before she left the Celestial Realm for good. After that, her father, the Spirit King, placed a ward around her which forbade anyone from loving her romantically ever again in hopes that his precious daughter's heart would never be broken.
It never stopped her from falling in love, however.
Every few years, she would be attracted to a man who would pass out of her life as quickly as he would come. Every time, her heart would be broken. Like now.
She'd seen the boy many times in the past few months. Sometimes he'd come to the shrine with his friends, sometimes he'd come alone. Each time, he'd shuffle his feet and be awkward, mumbling about how stupid it was to keep coming here. But in the depths of his heart, the Kami heard his whispered plea for love. There was a girl. A girl his heart yearned for and dreamed about. A girl who only saw him as a friend and nothing more. He wasn't even consciously praying for her love.
But it was a prayer all the same.
Leo looked at her with his wise old eyes and asked a simple question.
You do not want to grant his prayer, do you?
Her lion knew her too well. She didn't want to grant his prayer. The Kami was selfish. She wanted this handsome boy for herself. She knew it was useless, though. She had no choice but to grant his prayer. It was her duty.
And now she could see the results of her handiwork.
Her brown eyes followed the path of the beautiful boy as he walked away with his friends and the girl he would marry. Leo's hand rested on her shoulder gently. She knew it was foolish, but oh, she couldn't help it. The Princess's whole body drooped as she sank to the ground, her pink richly embroidered kimono puddling about her body. Silent sobs wracked her body. Love was not something a Kami like her was permitted to have.
There would be other boys.
She had an eternity left to live, after all.