One Time, Long Ago

In the story of Ayashi no Ceres there are striking similarities between the legend of the hagoromo and the series (but of course, the series is based off of the legend). However, instead of the celestial maiden returning to the heavens in the end of the story, the legend continues.

Ceres, a celestial maiden, was bathing when she was almost attacked by a shark, but Shiso comes along and slays the shark and saves her. During introductions, he finds her feathered robe and returns it to her at once, and she explains to him that her very life depends on that robe. He agrees that they have to take good care of it so he holds it for her for safekeeping.

Because Shiso is able to touch the robe, Ceres claims that he is the destined one and asks to stay on earth with him. He agrees and takes her back to his village. After a while, Ceres begins to love her life amoung the mortals. The village people are thrilled to have a celestial maiden living with them and Ceres is happy. Mikage Shiso, the man who took her robe to begin with, and also the head of the tribe, starts to court Ceres.

As time goes by, Shiso gives Ceres gifts daily and is very kind to her and eventually the two start to fall in love with each other. Apparently, Shiso is a very softspoken, kind man and the two are extremely happy and end up marrying and having children. At first, Ceres only planned on using him for his seed, but she ended up wanting to stay with him forever. In the beginning, Shiso is never once upset that Ceres has a power that he doesn't possess.

Happiness doesn't last long; one day Shiso and Ceres travel far from the village and are attacked by members of another tribe. Shiso is unable to fight them off and is getting beat up quite badly. Ceres becomes upset because of this and releases some of her heavenly power to defend him, which ends up saving his life.

Ceres does this all out of love and doesn't think anything of it. However, Shiso is upset because he had to be saved by his wife and wishes that he had some power so he could protect her. Ceres gladly gives him some so he can protect himself and their family.

One night not long after Shiso receives his powers, he returns home bloodied. Apparently, he 'met' the people who had attacked them and killed them all. He becomes amazed at what he can do with his power and becomes very engrossed in it. Soon after that, Shiso even hides Ceres' feathered robe because he claimed that it would take her away from him. He is so mad, he doesn't even try to listen to the reasoning that without her robe, Ceres will die.

Ceres is upset at the change in her husband and wonders where the Shiso who fell in love with her has gone. After a while, she becomes convinced that maybe he didn't even love her from the very beginning and was only using her because of her powers. She becomes doubtful of their relationship and very desperate to find her robe in order to save her life.

However, around this time Ceres' strength begins to give out because of her seperation with the feathered robe. Ceres doesn't want to die and is still struggling to try to believe that Shiso will return to his normal self. But as time goes on and nothing changes, Ceres begins to get weaker and weaker and eventually she takes her three children and tries to run away with them to find her robe and hide from her husband. Shiso intercepts them and ends up killing his oldest daughter who was trying to defend her mother.

Even after seeing Shiso kill their first-born child, Ceres still continues to try to believe in her husband and that one day he'll change back into his old self. But when he approaches her, she is lost in her grief and accidently kills Shiso by inflicting wounds all over his body. She regreats this very much, but puts first things first and continues to search with the best of her ability for her celestial robe.

Soon though, she no longer has the strength to go on and ends up resting underneath a tree and taking care of her two children until she herself dies. However, since she was a celestial being and still desperately wanted to find her robe, she kept being reincarnated for this purpose.