The Tanabata festival, adopted from the Chinese "Night of Sevens," commemorates the union of two celestial lovers, the stars Vega and Altair. In Japanese they are called the Weaver (Orihime) and the Herdsman (Kengyuu).

The lovely Orihime was the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, a vain ruler jealously fond of the gorgeous cloth his daughter wove on her loom. Yet watching from his throne on the Pole Star, even his cold heart could not ignore his daughter's despair as she spent day after day weaving together the threads of starlight. A prisoner of her loom, all her wondrous fabrics could not mask the darkness of her solitude.

So her father arranged a marriage with a loyal retainer of the court. His name was Kengyuu, and he tended the royal herds in the meadows across the River of Heaven. The marriage proved a most propitious union. The two were devoted to each other from the start, so deeply in love that their other cares and responsibilities faded from their attention. The Emperor's admonitions were ignored by the young couple. The loom gathered dust and the cattle roamed far and wide on the astral plains. In a fit of rage, the Emperor banished Kengyuu to the distant shores of the Milky Way.

Only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month (Tanabata), does he repent of his anger and permit the ferryman to cast off from the harbor of the Moon and carry Orihime across the River to her beloved's arms. Even so, if she has not completed her weaving to his satisfaction, he will forbid the ferry to cross. When that happens, we must call upon the magpies to fly up to the stars and weave a Bridge of Birds over which the princess can cross, else the rain of her tears will flood our homes and farms and put us all at peril.

Because peril has always been the price of true love and devotion.