It was the red of her hair that first caught his attention - hair the color of his weary overalls, themselves the color of flowing Toon blood. He'd seen it once - one of the Toons for a show far more crass than his own, a war film of sorts - how a scrape could break his painted skin and bring forth blood just like a human's. How very unlike a Toon he had been.
But something about humans craved the color of their own blood, splattering the life-giving color on everything they could get their hands on - their clothes, their flags, their hair, their Toons - and they worshipped it with a reverence given to the passion of love or anger that it brought. To see red shading everything meant a sure showing of wrath, but it marked the most romantic of their holidays with its brightest, most Toonlike vibrance.
The dichotomy of this always confused him - how this life color, this love color, this passion could also be something as painful as punishment. One would think the shades might be different - he lived in the differing forms of color and thrived in them as only Toons could - but no. He'd hoped for even the subtlety of something darker tainting the rage color - clotted blood as opposed to that more free-flowing - but there was nothing that precise, not to humans who had such a limited interpretation of color and its meaning.
Roger saw Jessica, and he understood.
Hair the color of passion, of love, of rage, of an all-consuming fire all rolled into one overwhelming beacon highlighted by a golden white glow from the nearby lamppost, the one some thing - he would not call it a human, not until he grew closer, because he knew he was drawn to entertain and amuse and live only by rules of what is or isn't funny, and what he is doing now is most certainly not funny but something other - this thing with arms throwing the woman in red against the lamppost with a sickening thud, its lips breaking into a crooked smile as her blood hair fell about her face, touching her blood clot dress.
By the time it brought her closer, forcing her mouth against its own, he could see the shade of her eyes. Humans might call them blue or green, but they were really somewhere in-between, as far as he could tell. They caught his own and he noticed how...flat they were. Toons were, for the most part, drawn to look two-dimensional, despite the way light cast the glow of a third dimension to them - but when Jessica's eyes met Roger's, it was if that feigned dimension was gone, that even the second dimension had disappeared, and all that was left was one thick dot - multi-colored, sure, but with a dot's consistency - watching him.
She winked, but the shade of her eyes in that moment spoke worlds that humans would never see, too focused on the red, the blue, the green - the definition of color they wanted in that moment regardless of whether that was its true meaning or not.
The colors of the woman in front of him spoke passion and seduction, but the shades she'd given them were warnings with cries for help wrapped inside.
It wasn't just her eyes that came across flat. Despite the lamplight illuminating her entire body - how could it not be highlighted thrust against the past like that? - her skin, her clothes, her full curves - all of it but the blood hair swept into her eyes - was flat.
How could he not intrude?