Take a man and a woman, and a mischievous, winged child who is dead-accurate with his love-arrows and what have you got? Love.

He's Cupid, the Roman god of love, who gets to take the spotlight in celebrations of love and lovers. In ancient Greece, he is Eros, the son of the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite.

One love story is about Cupid falling in love with the mortal maiden, Psyche. His mother, Venus, was jealous of Psyche's beauty, so he ordered Cupid to punish Psyche.

What happened was a paradox: Cupid sought to punish Psyche but he fell in love with her instead and ended up marrying her.

But because of some rule set by the gods, mortals weren't supposed to look at the face of a god. In this case, Psyche was not allowed to even take a peep at Cupid the hubby's face.

Of course, like in other stories and legends, meddling sisters provide the twist. Psyche had sisters and they convinced her to look at Cupid. This made him leave her, and the castle they have been living in just upped and vanished together with him. She was left standing in an open field.

Because she, too, was deeply in love with Cupid -- inspite of the manner in which he left her -- she tried to find him until she stumbled on Venus' temple.

Now we all know that mothers-in-law rarely get along well with their daughters-in-law, and Venus was no exception, goddess or no.

She gave Psyche a series of tasks, the succeeding ones harder than the previous ones. Now for the last task, Venus gave Psyche a little box and told her to take it to underworld, Pluto's realm. She had to get some of Proserpine's beauty, Pluto's very lovely wife, and put it in the box

Psyche got warnings not to open the box but then, mortal as she was, she couldn't resist the temptation and opened it. Insteady of finding beauty, deadly slumber was in the box.

Cupid, who finally came around and was getting ready to be the dutiful husband to Psyche once again, found her lying lifeless on the ground.

Now he wasn't a god with powers for nothing. He took all the sleep off her body and locked it in the box again. When Psyche awoke, Cupid forgave Psyche. His mother did too.