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When Historia first began to climb the strands she knew it was only because her father’s men hoped it would kill her.
Her missions were never truly important. She was fully aware of that. She was an afterthought, tying up loose ends that were completely fine to drift on their own regardless of her intervention. They didn’t hold enough significance to irrevocably alter the path of the present or disturb the true work of the Reiss family in their little sacred chapel altering threads. If only it was as dangerous as it was unimportant.
She's faced beasts with wicked claws and too many teeth on the daily, heart pounding in her ears as she escaped upstrand and downwind, scared and terrified with blood boiling on her tongue. She ran primitive armies into the ground and brought budding empires to insignificant ends. She had become countless poets, regurgitating words she did not recognize in the corners of cities where the sound of the humdrum drowned out her own voice. Insignificant. Meaningless.
Whatever menial task the priests assigned her, she did not question, knowing very well it was one more barely disguised prod to trip the illegitimate daughter of Rod Reiss into an early grave. She did all they asked of her without the power of titans. Pitifully human. Alone.
They gave her no claws, no teeth, no fingers the length of grown men.
But as the Reiss in their little hidden basement prayed and sent their best scouts desperately searching for a thieving goddess lost in time, Historia knew she had to find her first. Not a goddess, per say, but Ymir all the same.
Her Ymir.
A woman. A monster. A thief of the worst kind.
One who didn't have the foresight to understand what taking a Titan from the royal family meant.
She looked for freckles amidst the endless sands of beaches. She combed through civilizations for tawny amber eyes frozen in time, for that was the only way Ymir could survive. She tenderly wandered through forests too large to traverse in a lifetime. Constantly searching for Ymir between the branches of the past and the future.
Perhaps it was easier to find a god than a woman.
“You are truly infuriating.” Historia huffed, driving her fist into the rough bark of a tree. The wind was alive in her ears, nearly overtaking the roar of her own anticipation.
“You have terrible taste.” Ymir returned with a wild smile, her hair matted by the restless tossing of the air—distorting the features Historia had been seeking for weeks and months and years. “But if it brings you to me, I can hardly complain.”
She was dressed in simple robes, the linen worn dull and fraying with the passing of endless time and a multitudes of strands, tied around her hungry, lanky frame with rough lengths of rope.
They were born to humble beginnings, living to meet the ends of others and learning not to yearn for more. But Historia understood, fixated on the wet gleam of Ymir’s eyes and the cross of her smile, that they were worthy of so much more.
As they stood across from each other, the same grass beneath their soles—separated not by time but only distance, Historia knew. They deserved more than the weight of their names. They were more than false gods and illegitimate princesses born to dust and hanged by fate.
Historia fell to her knees, hands clasped in front of her.
“Leave the praying to the actual Ymir.” A second pair of hands enveloped hers, rough, calloused, and chilled from the wind.
“When I pray, I always pray to you.” Historia said. She did not feel religion in the makeshift chapels of her father’s family. She did not know the fervor with which they prayed and protected their secrets. The only faith she had the luxury to know was of her search for Ymir. And she only truly believed when she found her.
“You pray to a false goddess.” Ymir tutted gently as if divinity didn't lock their hands, twined together like lovers.
“No,” Historia said as Ymir lifted her back to her feet. Her knees were damp with dew, dyed a weeping green. “I’ve only felt religion when I’m with you.”
They clutched at each other, reluctant and unwilling to let go of what was nearly impossible to obtain and even more impossible to keep.
“You feel rebellion, chasing after a thief.” Ymir corrected, pulling away to ruffle Historia’s hair, laughing as Historia shook like a dog to fix the damage. She didn’t miss the way Ymir’s fingers lingered, trailing through slick blonde strands before coming to a rest at the warm curve of her neck.
“Perhaps, but you know just as well as I do how much more fun it is to skirt compliance.” To outrun time itself for the exhalation of a lover's breath.
“I stole your family’s titan by accident,” Ymir rolled her eyes, “It wasn’t even one of the more powerful ones. You should tell your father to keep them under more careful lock and key.”
“I think that’d be considered inhuman, and unethical.” Historia mused, “He’d be a big fan of your idea, you should meet him yourself, my love.”
Ymir laughed, throwing her head back to the wind.
Historia admired the slender line of her neck, her skin bronze and freckled with bird seed. She took pride in the deep, resonant reverberation of Ymir's throat as she cackled to the air, staining this strand with the sound of her laughter, an imprint and signature that she existed here. Permanently coloring the particles of this space as hers.
“You are a treat, but I’m sure your father’s scouts have already scented my little display.” Ymir stepped back, her laugh still coloring the air as stress tensed the cut of her lip. “There will never be enough time to fill my eyes with the sight of you.”
Ymir had waited just long enough for her to come, nestled away in some unremarkable strand of time for a few spare seconds. Historia survived on traces of Ymir, picking up the vibration of her breath on air, the ripples of her fingers on water, the gentle disruption of her presence through the shifting currents of endless strands where time lay still yet infinite.
She would know every form of Ymir. Hidden within the sand of glass and between the chords of the wind. Historia would tune her senses: her ears, her touch, her sight, her smell to the faintest trace of her detailed beloved.
“I’m not going back to Paradis,” Historia said with a smile, her chest clenched in anticipation, “This time, I am coming with you.”
Before Ymir could object, Historia interrupted her, racing in with words strides ahead of her thoughts.
“I have looked for the touch of your fingertips in every crevice of this world.” She said, “I have never known love. I have never understood the prattlings of my family’s religion. I do not know Ymir the Founder but I know through my time in the strands that you are no less divine. Not a goddess, perhaps, but just as beloved, if not more. One far more treasured and cherished, if only by one endlessly persistent acolyte.”
Ymir gently grasped Historia's hands, the warmth of her flesh what little remained of a fading sun. Her cheeks were red, from the confession or the bellowing air Historia could not tell. She laced their fingers together until the pads of their fingertips brushed. Her touch will remember the ridges of Ymir’s fingerprints, branding them into her skin.
“You give me hope,” Ymir whispered, her breath the ghost of a wind. The endless depths of her eyes twinkled brighter than the light of any dying star.
Historia held her breath.
“And gods are selfish creatures.”