• Sometimes, she likes to imagine that he has forgotten her — a lazy, warm type of forgotten, that comes only after years and years of remembering. Fauns live a very long time, he had told her once, after they had talked about growing older. He tried to explain why, but he couldn't seem to make the words sound out correctly, and he kept getting flustered.
    "We just, I mean…" Tumnus had kept saying. "You see, I… we… I mean. We just do."

    "Does that mean you'll stay the same for a very long time?" she had asked.

    "Um. I suppose it does." He hadn't aged a day from the moment he'd met her. His eyes still sparkled merrily with youth, his mouth still turned down in the most silly way when he was frustrated. There might have been a slight wrinkle at the corner of his eye, but it might have only been the sun. She had grown older, more beautiful, and shined more brightly than the sun.

    A Calormene suitor, frustrating and insulting as he had been, had composed a serenade in Lucy's honor. Her eyes are deep like the singing sea, Her hair so many rainbows in my sight. She had withstood the torturous singing of the earnest young man to make Susan jealous, but had only succeeded in giving Edmund a laughing fit, and the young man had left insulted and promised to bring misfortune on them all, in turn causing Ed to laugh harder. Tumnus had only smiled, and later sang to her the same song in his warm baritone voice.

    She likes to think he might have cried, a bit, after she left. They had been so close, in those later years, after Susan had become so beautiful, Peter so majestic, and Edmund had become so wise. Lucy became braver, more courageous, more valiant. Daring even.

    She had held his hand on her 16th birthday, his palm warm and dry, her forearm tickled by the soft hair that grew on his. She had kissed him a year later, quick and fierce, and she had run off laughing. He had held his hand to his cheek, where her lips had fallen a moment earlier, and looked off in to the distance as if dazed by the sun. It became a joke between friends, then something a little more, and she had kissed him for real behind the riding stables two months before her 18th birthday. She remembers how her fingers felt, running through the curls on his head down the line of fur on his back. She remembers how his breath felt on her cheek — hot and moist — when they had lain together after the bacchanals.

    Lucy tries to remember other things, and they come to her briefly, like echoes or a song she hums but doesn't know the words.

    Dark eyes at sunset. Rough, cracked edges of horns. The feeling of his arms on her waist as they danced, his head resting on hers. The sound of his laugher as she falls out of a boat into the lake, and his strong hands as he hauls her out.

    She does remember tea though – long afternoon teas, with sardines, marmalades, and hot, black tea with just enough real cream and sugar – and she will often make tea for her mother in the same way, brewing the tea just as he had, pouring the perfect amount for his cups. She doesn't know if its correct, as she will not taste it, but she sees the pleasure in her mother's face and tries to imagine his. He was always better at making tea than she was.

    Other things are harder. She tries to remember what it felt like to lie next to him in the morning, his quiet snoring the cause for her restless sleep, his face cool in the first light of dawn. Memories of their lovemaking are completely gone, save for flashes in her dreams when her small body remembers what it was like to be big. She can't remember the shape of his face under her hands, though she remembers quite clearly what it looks like. She can remember clearly his voice, when he whispered "I love you," but she cannot clearly remember the circumstances. She remembers that it was in the early morning, and it was dark, and they were lying together in her chambers, but more than that… nothing.

    She tries as hard as she can to keep remembering the moments before she left for the Stag hunt, before she left home. She remembers waking up, her body curved around his. They had dined merrily the night before and talked excitedly about the hunt. After two strong glasses of Silenius' best wine, they had retired a bit headily to her chambers and made fast love before falling asleep amidst tangled sheets. She remembers he had kicked the coverlet off his furry legs in the night. She remembers a quick breakfast of strong coffee, toast and boiled eggs before joining her brothers and sister in the great hall. She remembers kissing him and saying goodbye. She remembers leaning into his neck as she embraced him, inhaling deeply his strong scent – musky and spicy, like a September morning – and kissing him gently in the dip of his neck between his collarbone.

    She hopes he still remembers, after the years that have passed. Months have passed where she remains young, a child still, and she remembers. The memories came unbidden at times, when she would be calculating her math exercises in her bedroom or at night in the tub. Being only eight, she tried not to cry, for it was more than a bit embarrassing for Susan to come to collect her out of the tepid water and find her blubbering into her washcloth.

    She had tried to explain about Spare Oom once and who she had been once, trying to remember the time before she had been a Queen of Narnia. It had been difficult, for there were a great many things missing from her memory.

    "I remember…" she had began, and stopped. They had been sitting atop the wall of Cair Paravel that faced the Eastern Sea, where they had watched Aslan disappear after the coronation, and Lucy had been eating an apple and sharing it with Tumnus. "I remember my mother. She watched us get on the train."

    "Train?" Tumnus had asked, perplexed. "Why would you step on some poor woman's dress?" Lucy had laughed brightly and tried to correct him.

    "No," she said. "Trains are great metal monsters that carry us around the countryside."

    Tumnus had only made a sound that could be described as a "Hmmm," and he had collected her in his arms. They sat together, facing the sun, and the faun had stretched out his hooves along the polished marble. She offered the apple to him, the juice running down her arm, and he had bitten off a piece right from her hand. They mostly just sat in silence.

    Now, she wonders if he has remembered the same things. He would be quite old now… for fauns do not live forever.

    "We are not immortal, dear Lucy," he had continued, when they were talking about the life span of fauns. "We are merely given as long a life as Aslan grants. It just happens to be longer than the average beaver's or horses'."

    Lucy had thought about this for a moment, contemplating life, and tried not to look sad. "Does this mean you shall live longer than I?"

    Tumnus had not said anything then, but had only reached for her hand.

    She wonders if it is better to forget, than remember. These things are intangible to her now, locked away in memories of a life lived before, and now she can neither forget nor remember. Being only eight, she can only distinctly remember every moment of that first meeting – a strange creature, a faun really, wearing a red scarf, clutching packages as if he had been to market, and carrying an umbrella to shield him from the snowfall.