Seen from behind, a boy in a rust-red tunic and a grey wolf stand together on a ridge at sunset, looking out over a wide valley where a river winds toward the horizon. One raven flies overhead and another is perched on the ridge beside them.

Raven Dream Stories

Folk tales from ten quiet corners of the world. Told slowly, at dusk, for grown-ups who have trouble putting the day down.

Watch on YouTube

What this is

Every story begins somewhere real.

A courtyard in Fez as the lamps come on. A red croft door in the Hebrides, holding out against a silver sea. A ger on the steppe with the grass going gold, then slate, then dark.

Someone there wants a small, human thing. To finish a task. To find what was lost. To understand a sound in the night.

They find it. Nothing frightening happens. Nothing is left hanging. There is never a cliffhanger, because you are not meant to stay awake for the next part.

And a raven crosses the sky, the way it always does. Near the end it settles somewhere with its wings folded, and that is how you know.

Ten seasons

Ten places, one sky.

Each season stays in one part of the world long enough to learn its light. The people change every story. The land, and the one sound it keeps making, do not.

  1. The Hush of Falling Snow

    Tohoku, Japan

    Small gold windows in a blue-hour cold, and snow coming down heavy and slow enough to watch a single flake all the way to the ground.

    A bronze temple bell, its hum fading into snow

  2. The Courtyard of Cool Water

    The medina, Fez

    Warm dusk bouncing between close ochre walls, lamplight climbing the tile as the rose goes out of the sky.

    The courtyard fountain, its small voice never stopping

  3. The Turning Tide

    The Hebrides

    Sea and sky the same silver, and one red croft door holding all the warmth there is.

    The tide itself, going out and coming home

  4. The Weaver's Valley

    The high Andes

    Thin clear air, violet shadows going long, and a sky so near you could rest your hand on it.

    The backstrap loom, and the blanket growing row by row

  5. The Rain on the River

    The Mekong delta

    Every light doubled in the water, and warm rain softening the edges of the whole world.

    The lotus, closing every evening, opening every dawn

  6. The Cooling Sand

    The central Sahara

    Violet over gold-shadowed dunes, and one bank of embers holding the only warmth for a hundred miles.

    The desert well, cool and patient beneath everything

  7. The Sky That Breathes

    Sápmi

    A dusk that never quite ends, and green light moving overhead like something breathing in its sleep.

    The reindeer bell, one clear far-off note

  8. The Forest That Glows

    Aotearoa

    Enclosed dark under the canopy, lit blue-green from within, as though the ground kept its own quiet sky.

    The glowworm cave, the forest's own small stars

  9. The Shell and the Shallow Sea

    The Caribbean

    Coral afterglow on blood-warm water, and the night insects starting up as the lamp goes on.

    The conch shell on the veranda rail

  10. The Song of the Grass Sea

    The Mongolian steppe

    Gold grass darkening to slate under the widest sky there is, and one glowing door in all of it.

    The horsehead fiddle

The look

One palette, one hour.

Rust-red, ochre, muted gold, slate-blue. Diffused overcast light and a soft hazy distance. Painterly brushwork, no hard edges, nothing that glares at one in the morning. Every frame obeys the same locked look, so ten worlds still feel like one world.

A tree full of white doves against a sunset sky, a raven perched among them, a girl below with her eyes closed and a coyote asleep at her feet.
A crescent moon and stars over a desert, a girl asleep against a curled-up coyote, a raven watching from a rock nearby.
The sun setting through tall pines, a boy and a grey wolf sitting together in the gold light, a raven flying through it.
A snow-covered village at blue hour, one warm lantern burning, hazy mountains fading into mist behind it.
A crescent moon over open ground, a horse lying down, a boy asleep against his dog, a raven close by.
A desert village at dusk with a single lit window, a girl and a coyote walking home along the road.

The images here are from the Raven Travels picture books, which share the channel's locked palette and its art pipeline.

A black raven perched at the top of a tall saguaro cactus, still, against a rust and slate-blue dusk sky.

The thread

About the raven.

It never speaks. It never helps. It never causes anything to happen.

It crosses the sky early, and near the end it comes to rest. A rooftop, a branch, a stone. Wings folded. Still.

It belongs to no country and every country. The people below may have a name for it. The story never says whether they are right.

You will start watching for it. That is the point.

How to listen

Put it on and stop trying.

Lights off, or nearly. Screen face down after the first minute. Nothing on it is needed after that.

The voice is warm and unhurried, near a hundred and twenty words a minute, which is slower than anyone has spoken to you all day.

You are not expected to reach the end. Most people will not. The stories are built to be left.

The channel is new.

New enough that you would be early. The first stories are going up now, and a hundred more are written and waiting behind them.

Watch on YouTube Read the ten worlds

Books are coming. The picture books that started all of this are being made ready now.