Tumnus returns to the lamp-post day after day, wishing that he had never mentioned the White Stag and hoping that Lucy Pevensie might wander out from the trees again, that Cair Paravel might ring with her and her siblings’ laughter again and that their thrones would no longer look like cenotaphs, sitting grave and solemn atop the dais, tributes to the kings and queens who had vanished without a word.

But Lucy is never there to meet him, and as the snows arrive and melt and the days warm and then again grow shorter and colder, he, like the rest of Narnia, loses hope that the young queen and her siblings will return.

But he still returns to Lantern Waste with the changing of each season—and sometimes sooner than that, on days that he feels the loss of Lucy and her siblings more keenly—hoping that Aslan might bring them back and deliver Narnia again—but he most hopes most of all to have his dearest friend back.