A Bearmindful story · about 8 minutes
The Cub Who Could Not Sleep
Last time you got as far as .
Before you press play
It runs all the way through
Press play once. The beginning plays, then the middle, then the end, without anyone having to touch anything. You can jump between the three parts with the buttons above if you would rather.
Lights down is for actual bedtime
It takes everything else off the screen and drops the brightness right down, so the only thing lit in the room is the picture. Press Escape, or the button again, to bring it back.
If someone falls asleep
The site remembers where you got to for a day. Come back tomorrow and it offers to carry on from there rather than starting over.
Placeholder film and audio
The two films and the audio e-story are supplied during the build. Until they arrive, the parts you can see here run on timed illustrations and a synthesised forest bed — the same transport, the same three parts, the same behaviour. When the real files land they drop straight into these slots and nothing else changes.
Read the middle of the story instead of listening to it
The cub sat down in the middle of the clearing, because his legs had decided that was enough walking for now.
Above him, something moved. It was an owl, and she was very old, and she was looking at him the way owls look at things — slowly, and all the way through.
“I can’t sleep,” said the cub.
“No,” said the owl. “I can see that.”
She did not tell him to try harder. She did not tell him to count anything. She said: “Can you feel where you are sitting?”
The cub thought about it. He could. The ground was cool, and a little bit damp, and there was a small stone under his left foot.
“Good,” said the owl. “Now — what can you hear?”
The cub listened. At first there was nothing at all. And then there was everything: the wind going through the tops of the trees like water, and something small moving in the ferns, and, far away, a river.
“I can hear the wind,” said the cub. “And a river. And something in the ferns, but I think it is only a beetle.”
“It is only a beetle,” the owl agreed.
They sat there for a while and did not say anything.
“Now breathe in,” said the owl, “as slowly as you can. And now let it go.”
The cub breathed in until his chest was round, and then he let it all go, and his shoulders came down, and he had not known his shoulders were up.
“Again,” said the owl.
So he did it again. And again. And somewhere around the fourth time, the cub stopped noticing he was doing it at all.