He once loved a woman with dark hair and eyes that were yet darker, and set in a pale ivory face. (Too strong to be breakable, too capable to be porcelain. Ivory is killed for and that seems apt.) She had flitted in front of him, a monarch butterfly swathed in red, and his fingers couldn't stretch far enough to touch her, hold her, make her tangible. Make her his.
He had been grey and blue and black, straight backed and hair neatly combed; she had been crimson and violet and teal, straight backed and hair neatly coiffed. He had made polite conversation, she had entranced them all. He had smiled, she had smirked and he could only watch from afar (too far).
1920 and the world had changed beyond all recognition. Once more there were bright colours everywhere- topaz blues and jewelled greens and even the whites were sleeker and more decadent. In candlelight and under chandeliers he heard softly spoken stories about her. He was dragged, heels digging into the ground and silently screaming, into this new existence, where the greys and browns of his old life were taboo and the Somme still haunted his nightmares.
He loves a woman whose blonde hair is beginning to shimmer again in the moonlight, becoming accustomed to friendly sunlight; whose eyes are the palest blue and the lightest grey (steely after all she has seen), whose skin is golden but pale. The hollows of her cheeks (the transit camps at Constantinople, he thinks, are responsible for those) are flushed with the vitality of life, a vitality that surprises them both, after all they have seen.
She flits in front of him but his fingers stretch to touch the crater of her clavicle and she pauses, eyes closed, smiles beautifully. In her waif-like state she drifts closer to him and his fingers needn't stretch anymore.
He is navy and pale tweed, straight backed and hair mussed when she runs her fingers lightly through it. She is a myriad colours, pale greens and creams and sometimes deep sapphire. (She won't wear red and for that he is sometimes grateful.) They say what they think and her accent turns sentences into unheard symphonies. He grins, she laughs and they link fingers as the sun creeps into the bedroom and they are awash with golden light.