Frozen Memories
A/N: This story is Tumnus-centric, and contains fluff as well as slight angst. I do not support L/T. Contains two OC's.
1.) The Snowman Begins
"It looks like someone took and dumped a whole bag of sugar all over the courtyard!" Lucy almost shouted in her excitement, running towards the door that led to Cair Paravel's upper courtyard.
"Queen Lucy, you're forgetting your cloak!" Tumnus scurried after Lucy, grabbing her cloak off a chair as he passed it. "You know Queen Susan wouldn't—"
Lucy stopped her mad dash long enough for Tumnus to fasten the soft burgundy cloak around her shoulders, and bolted for the door again.
Tumnus smiled to himself as the door slammed behind her. It had been a hundred years since he'd seen anyone so joyous about a snowfall.
Suddenly the door burst open again, and Lucy's head, cheeks flushed with cold, popped in. "Aren't you coming, Mr., Tumnus?" she demanded.
Tumnus hesitated. "Well, I don't really—"
"Oh, come on, pleeeease," Lucy begged, tugging on the reluctant Faun's arm. "This is the first snow of the year!"
"Oh, all right," Tumnus sighed, attempting to smile while he wrapped his scarf around his neck. "But you should know…nothing you say will convince me to stick my tongue to an icicle."
Lucy giggled and disappeared. Tumnus opened the door and winced at the chill wind that greeted his skin.
Like an ebullient little nymph, Lucy flitted about, marveling over the frozen courtyard. The glass-clear ice, the intricate snowflakes, and the white clouds her breath formed were all beyond beautiful to her. "Look," she cried, pointing to an icicle illuminated by a rare shaft of sunlight, "it's almost sparkly like a diamond."
"It certainly is," Tumnus conceded politely as he sat down quietly on a frosty stone bench.
"I'm going to build a snowman," Lucy declared, and she stooped and buried her gloved hands in the snow.
Tumnus drew his brows together quizzically. "A snowman? What's that?"
"Well, I'll tell you." Lucy's voice took on what Peter called "the explanation tone", which she only used when explaining a custom from her world that confused most Narnians. "It's where you take three large snowballs, stack them on top of one another, and give the top snowball a face. It's a man made out of snow."
Tumnus nodded. "But then what do you do with it?"
"Well…nothing. You just leave it there. It's supposed to be a decoration."
"A man made out of snow is a decoration?"
Lucy smiled and shook her head. "Just wait and see," she insisted.
"All right," Tumnus agreed, rolling his eyes and smirking. Lucy certainly had brought back some strange concepts from Spare Oom.
As she began forming a ball out of a handful of snow, Lucy started her delighted gushing again. "I don't remember any snows back home being like this! Why don't Peter and Su and Ed come out? I say, Mr. Tumnus, Narnia is quite beautiful in winter, isn't it?"
"Of course, of course," Tumnus agreed absently, burying his nose and mouth in the warm folds of his scarf. But in truth, he disagreed. Yes, he knew the prophecy had been fulfilled in Narnia's new monarchs. Yes, he knew Jadis was dead, and so were her hundred years of winter. Still, he could find no beauty whatsoever in this "first" snow. He now pretty nearly detested winter. He'd seen, lived in, and been terrorized by winter since he was but seven.
And Tumnus believed he would never recover from it.