Some legends say I was born as a star. I don't know if they think I fell from the sky, or what, but I was up there twinkling like a little diamond, just like the children's song goes.
Some say I started as a flower. A blue flower growing in an empty clearing, like center stage, with sparkling sapphire petals that glistened in the sun. A variation of this story was that it was beneath the shade of a tree that spirits slept inside, or that this flower was nourished with water that came from the Goddess Pond. What I do know about this Goddess Pond thing is that one has been reserved for me, in each town that springs up every hundred years in this rural province.
And in recent decades, myths about me are either challenged or supported by religious parochial schools led by the same pastor figures. I'm rivaled by a nameless deity simply known as God. But if God is real, how can this church dispel "curses" found on artifacts discovered in the mines everyday? Do God and I coexist, or is one ignored in favor of the other? Fortunately, trends turn as time passes by, and eventually the parochial schools go back to revering me, erecting statues of me at their local festivals, praying and making offerings to me, and thanking me for the turn of the seasons.
I am close to turning two thousand years old. I am no longer able to ask my surroundings to recount how I was born, and these days I don't care to remember.
I may as well have been a fairy-tale baby that sprouted from a cabbage patch, or a tadpole that came out of a pond. But if you were a legendary goddess, immortal, beautiful, feared and respected by all, would the fact of your birth matter much to you?
As a child I was raised by the heavens, the earth, and all in between. I heard voices in my heart. When the trees rustled in the winds, they were telling me not to run so fast, to be careful. The mountains stood still, but proud, and smiled when I got up after I fell down. Flowers bloomed and peered up at me, insisting that I set an example. But there was also a set of strong arms -- strong, invisible, warm and supporting arms that would embrace me when I was lost in my thoughts. It was a force both maternal and paternal at the same time. I had listened so strongly to all the natural forces telling me, "One day you will be beautiful, and hold so much power, and you will live forever…" that when this happened, I always forgot to turn around and look for whomever it was sheltering me.
The world itself granted me Goddess Ponds because I liked to sit on the banks and dip my feet into its cool waters. I feared storms, and dreaded having to face them when I grew and faced my responsibilities. During such a natural disaster, the ponds always welcomed me. They were spacious enough so that I could sink in and sort of bury myself. The waters were always the same cool temperature. What made every Goddess Pond so mystical was the fact that they were empty. I had panicked so much during typhoons and blizzards that, in this makeshift shelter, I looked up and watched the surface, immersed in soothing blue, I didn't calm down long enough to wish that I had a fish or a turtle to keep me company.
So each pond like this became sacred. Hiding in the pond became a habit that lasted throughout my entire childhood, and Nature laughed at me, assigning me there permanently, and I would have to report there if a human had the good faith or superstition to try to find me. This was the price I had to pay upon reaching adolescence, for being afraid and shirking my duties as a child. Until then, I was a student of Nature. My job for hundreds of years was to communicate with my surroundings, to form a bond, to listen. Every day I would walk my rounds until I learned how to respect that which did not have literacy, or spoken language. I had to train my pure heart until the earth's emotions became my own.
The very best thing about being born and appointed the Harvest Goddess was that starting from my first day of official "existence", I was guaranteed eternal beauty. I do not remember a time when I was not adorned with silks and satins made of insubstantial elements: sheets woven of sunbeams, pearls hardened from dew, threads carefully plucked from currents of wind. I suppose that when I touch my body, I do feel skin. Maybe I even have a beating heart, and a bloodstream. The fabrics of my gowns feel indeed like fabrics. The blues and greens I wear really are inspired by the different hues of the sea in the changing seasons. I shudder to think that my hair was loomed from seaweed, or vine, and fortunately the color does change. I wear all the most pulchritudinous things that even man cannot hope to emulate.
What makes me sad is that, like a fictional ghost, I do wander like a spirit, and I cannot physically touch the clever structures built by man. It takes a borrowed act of Nature for me to open a door; I cannot reach for it and turn a doorknob myself. Like a hologram, the figure of my hand sluices through.
Even more distressing is that few mortals have ever seen me.
The forces that preceded me must have listened. Years progressed, but I only took sighs, unnoticing. On the brink of my adolescence, I suddenly had some other souls I could actually talk to. I was granted a Kappa creature, an amphibious mystical animal, cute and bulbous with a taste for mischief. Then came a creature I wished I could cuddle -- a towering mass of warm fur and muscle, a yeti called Mukumuku that guarded the snow-capped mountains in Winter. There were also fabled Keifu fairies that were perpetually dormant within a dying tree that was much older than myself, but I always considered them beyond my own jurisdiction. They were not fully my siblings, and I had assumed that there were other plans for them that would never concern me. So my new company, much more vibrant and alive, were definitely fine for my loneliness.
Contrary to popular belief, I never had a "throne" to ascend to. I came of age, more or less a thousand years, and those tough arms that reached out and embraced me as a child spoke to me without a voice. I was granted hundreds of servants called Harvest Sprites, and was promised hundreds, maybe even thousands more, in the years to come. Until this point, I was the only one that carried a humanoid image. I instantly loved these little guys -- their matching colored suits, pointed hats, and miniature statures. It was understood that my duty was to lead, and guide this area into many eras of peace and prosperity, to keep our land unscarred by humans. But with no one around at that time, I used the Harvest Sprites for my amusement. I had hundreds of different personalities to befriend, dances to watch, songs to listen to.
Soon after I had fully reached and had claimed my title as the Harvest Goddess, I decided that our solitude had lasted long enough. As a protector, I did have much to protect, but nothing to protect my realm from. I had listened to so much about humans, I was wary of so many precautions, but curiosity prevailed. I still think it will be a long time before I leave my childishness behind, knowing my own curious tendencies. I made the move to make this land's beauty stand out more, and appeal to humans, so that I might watch them myself and learn everything I wanted to know first-hand.
Experiencing love was far from my list of plans.