The Registry of Small Wonders | Relaxing Story For Sleep with Male Narrator

Hey, Jeffrey here, and welcome back to Night Falls. This is your day been. I hope you've had a good one and you're now all cozy and sleepy. I've got a quick favour to ask. Please do share the show with friends and family. It helps us to grow and hopefully we can soothe them to sleep with some stories from Night Falls. I've just been on the most gorgeous walk with Otto. The sun was peeping through the trees, the burn was sparkling and bubbling with insects buzzing around, and a heron that flew with us always two steps ahead. The beauty of those things aside, sometimes on these walks I find glory in the most mundane things. The sound of a latch on a gate, the squelch of mud underfoot, the dance of pollen in the shafts of sunlight. Perfect. Tonight I'm going to share a story that's all about shooting into the extraordinary beauty, hiding in ordinary things. Before we begin, here's the quick ad break that keeps this free content possible. To go ad free, subscribe via the link in the show notes. When was the last time you stopped and listened to your body? Here's a Holland and Barrett ad break to do just that. Go on, have a listen to your gut. Is that a gurgle? A rumble? Is it straining after lunch? Or is it saying, you've got to show me love? We know what your body's asking for. Instore online on the app. Back your body, Holland and Barrett. Instagram teen accounts with automatic protections on who can contact teenagers and the content they can see. Instagram teen accounts have contact limits on by default, so teenagers get messages from people they know, not strangers, and default content settings. Plus, teenagers under 16 can't change these default settings without parental approval, so parents can help teenagers connect safely. Learn more at instagram.com. You know, there are a lot of different places here in Night Falls, but during the day, I still find myself wanting to learn a little more about the world. That's what led me to Everything Everywhere Daily. It's one of the most popular daily education podcasts. I've recently ranked the number one history podcast, and each episode is about 10 minutes, so it's easy to fit into your day. They cover everything from history and science to fascinating people and moments you might never have come across otherwise. Some recent episodes I really liked include one on the history of curling, which as a Scott I have a soft spot for, tracing it back to Medieval Scotland. Or their episode on the world's greatest art museums, which I find myself really drawn to. I've always loved art, and hearing the stories behind these places makes it feel surprisingly immersive, so if you like the idea of learning something new without ever feeling like work, learn something new every single day with Everything Everywhere Daily. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, now back to Night Falls. Iris Whitmore considered herself an unremarkable woman with an unremarkable job, working for the municipal council in the revenue department. She'd been there for seven years, documenting parking fines and cataloging business licenses with methodical precision. Not everyone who worked at the revenue department enjoyed their jobs, but Iris found pleasure in it. She enjoyed that the office door had a brass door knob, which fitted perfectly in her hand, but made the most satisfying heavy clunk when it swung closed. She enjoyed the papers she spent her day filling made delicate whispering, rustling noises. To her, they sounded like they were telling secrets. In fact, not that she would ever share this with anyone, she sometimes felt that if she just listened hard enough, she would hear what the papers were whispering to her. She enjoyed the way that when the kettle boiled, its steam fogged the office windows, the neat little zip noise the office blinds made when they were pulled up or down. The quirks of her co-workers, one of them collected stamps, but only from France, and one insisted on writing everything in a fountain pen filled with green ink. And the feeling of turning the light off and bathing the office in darkness, whenever she was the last to leave. And then, one Tuesday morning, rather like her unremarkable job, Iris was having her usual unremarkable start to the day, until she received a very remarkable letter. For one thing, it had not arrived in ordinary post. One minute, she had been admiring the way the sunlight fell through the jar of marmalade on the breakfast table, and the next minute, she realized with a start that there was an envelope propped against the marmalade jar. Remarkable. What also made this letter remarkable was the envelope, which was the color of twilight, and the writing on it, which was done in flourishes of silver calligraphy. And more remarkable still, the contents of the letter, which in foreign Irish, she was getting a promotion, not to senior administrative officer at the revenue office, which was a post she had been quietly hoping for, not to the department head, which was a post she had been secretly dreaming about. No, Iris was being transferred to another department altogether, one she'd never heard of. Here is precisely what the letter said. Dear Ms. Whitmore, you were cordially invited to accept the position of archivist at the Registry of Small Wonders, a department of the Emporion of all imaginable things, in the city of Somnolence. Your particular skills in noticing what others overlook have not gone unnoticed. We have need of someone who can catalog the small, but essential, miracles of everyday life. Should you choose to accept this position, please be at your local train station this evening as the first star appears. Wait on Platform 7, the midnight blue train will arrive. It will take you where you need to go. Use in wonder the keeper of intangible collections. Iris read the letter three times. Then she checked the date on her calendar to make sure it was not April Fool's Day. It was not. Iris Whitmore had always been perfectly content with her life and her job, and all the small pleasures both of these afforded her every day. She had no wish to change her life in any way, and yet this letter awoke a sense of marvellous curiosity in her. And so, although it was entirely out of character, Iris came to a decision with herself. She would travel to the city of Somnolence and take up this mysterious new post at the registry of small wonders. She spent the day at work in a state of distracted reverie, listening to the whisper of the documents she filed and the satisfying clunk of the closing door. When five o'clock came, feeling like she was in a dream, she put on her coat, wound her scarf around her neck, and walked towards the train station. She was surprised to find Platform 7 existed at all. She'd been catching trains from this station for years and had only ever noticed Platforms 1 through 6. She was surprised too at how peaceful this platform was. In the early evening, the station was busy with commuters, but she was the lone passenger on the seventh platform. Iris savoured the unexpected moment of solitude while she waited for the first star to rise in the sky. The twilight above her head deepened. The first star of the evening appeared, winking at her, companionably. And then, from somewhere far away, she heard it. A train whistle. It sounded like an invitation. The train that pulled into the station was midnight blue, just as the letter had promised. Its brass fittings gleamed, its windows glowed with warm golden light. The doors opened with a soft sigh, and Iris stepped aboard. Inside, she met a conductor in a blue velvet coat that fastened with star-shaped buttons. He showed her down a softly carpeted corridor to a private compartment. A bed dressed in crisp white linens occupied one wall, piled with pillows. Heavy blue curtains in midnight blue were drawn across the window. Everything smelled faintly of lavender, and something else she could not quite name. She sniffed deeply. It was the smell of possibility, perhaps, or adventure. The train pulled away, rocking gently down the tracks. Iris's eyelids felt suddenly heavy. She climbed into bed, and before she knew it, she was asleep. When Iris woke, pale morning light was filtering through the curtains. A steaming cup of herbal tea was on the table next to her bed. Iris sipped it slowly, enjoying the way the delicate blend of herbs danced over her tongue. Then, placing the tea cup with a satisfying chink back into its saucer, she drew the curtains. She gasped. Outside the window, the world had transformed. The train was descending into a valley surrounded by tall, blue mountains. Their peaks were white with snow. A frozen river wound through the valley like a silver ribbon. And there, nestled between the snowy mountains and the frosty river, was a very remarkable looking city. All tall ornate buildings, fantastical statues, glass domes and turrets. So this was some knowledge. The train pulled into a station that looked, to Iris, like a palace. She buttoned herself into her coat and stepped onto the platform, her breath misting in the cool air. The station was busy with travelers, families with children, couples walking arm in arm, musicians carrying instrument cases, artists with portfolios under their arms. Iris followed the flow of people out of the station and into the streets of some knowlands. The morning air was crisp. Snow crunched softly beneath her feet. She walked past coffee houses with steamed up windows, bakeries displaying cakes like jeweled sculptures, past bookshops and toy shops, past shops selling things she could not quite identify, passed a wonderfully elegant department store with a sign that read, The Emporium of All Imaginable Things. Curiously, for she had never visited some knowlands before, she had a sense that she knew exactly where she was going. Which was why she found herself climbing a small hill and stopping at the building perched on its top. A silver sign on the building's door read, Registry of Small Wonders, Staff Entrance. She pushed open the door and found herself in a quiet corridor. Her footsteps echoed softly as she walked its length. It led to a spiral staircase with a polished wooden banister. Iris noticed and appreciated how the banister was walking. The staircase led up, up, up to a door the very same shade of twilight blue as the envelope she had received the day before. Iris drew a deep breath, raised her hand, and the door opened. The door opened and opened. The door opened and opened. The door opened and opened. The door opened and opened. The door opened and opened. Raised her hand and knocked. At Iris's first knock, the door swung open as if by magic. She found herself in a room that seemed to exist outside of ordinary spatial logic. It was not especially large and yet it felt vast. Tall windows led in streams of pale morning light. The walls were lined with mahogany cabinets. Each cabinet contained hundreds upon hundreds of small drawers labelled in meticulous copper plate handwriting. In the centre of the room stood a desk. On the desk in that familiar twilight shade of blue, lay a note addressed to her. Dear Miss Widmore, welcome to the small Wander's department. Your predecessor retired after 40 years of devoted service, and we are delighted to have you continue this essential work. Your task is simple and infinite. To catalogue the small miracles that occur in the course of ordinary life, you will find your current assignment in the top drawer of this desk. Iris opened the top drawer. Inside was a single card on which was written assignment, catalogue small Wander's pertaining to the colour blue. She sat down at the desk. She opened a ledger that lay ready its pages creamy and blank. She uncapped a fountain pen that had been thoughtfully provided, and then she paused. What exactly constituted a small wonder related to the colour blue? For several minutes she sat in silence, watching dust motes drift through the morning light. And then gradually, blues began to arrive in her mind. She began to write. The particular shade of blue velvet lining my grandmother's jewellery box, which I was allowed to touch on special occasions. Once she had written this, another blue arrived in her mind. The blue of a robin's egg discovered intact on the ground. And another. The blue of my father's workshirts sun-faded and smelling of laundry soap. She wrote all the small miraculous blues she could remember. But then she couldn't think of any more. She stretched back in her chair, tapped her pen against her chin, and looked around the room, waiting to see if another blue would come to her. It did, after a fashion. A sunbeam pierced through one of the room's tall windows and shone a spotlight on a single drawer. Iris went to the drawer and opened it. From inside, she drew out a fragment of summer sky from a July afternoon in 1987. She added it. Then another drawer caught the corner of her eye. This held a sample of the blue that flickers at the center of a gas flame. She continued in this way for the rest of the afternoon, going to drawers that held the royal blue of leather encyclopedia covers. The blue of her eyes was a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit of a blue. Blue gray of the ocean. Iris had to be careful not to splosh that one all over the floor. And the blue of summer twilight. The next day, Iris returned. There were still many blues to be catalogued. The blue of old photographs fading with time. The blue of swimming pool water in summer. The blue note in jazz. That particular musical pitch that conveyed ache and sweetness. The blue tinged smell of snow about to fall. As she worked, she noticed slowly that she was not alone in the room. There were in the vast space of the registry office, other mahogany desks, other workers busy filling their registry books, walking from drawer to drawer. Over the next few days, she met her fellow archivists. Marcus was archiving small wonders pertaining to windows. The ice blossoms that appeared across their panes in winter. The joy conveyed by a small child's nose print against a foggy glass. And Yolanda archived small wonders pertaining to autumn. So far, she had catalogued 17 different varieties of leaf rustle. Winter deepened in some nollands, and Iris found yet more blues to catalog. She archived the blue of icicles hanging from eaves, each one containing trapped light. The blue shadows cast by snow and moonlight. The blue gray of the sky before a snowstorm. One morning, when the snow was thawing, and the first pale green leaves of spring were starting to appear on the trees, Iris walked into the registry. She walked into the registry and saw another twilight blue envelope on her desk. She opened it. An ID badge dropped out. Underneath her photograph was written, Iris Whitmore, registry of small wonders, field agent. Iris understood it was time for her to go out into the world and find more small wonders to add to the archive. She started in some nollands itself. She collected samples from the blue forget-me-nots that grew between the cracks and the cobblestones, and from the first delicate blue bells that appeared in the fields around the city on the first day of milky spring sunshine. She collected the blue letters and shop signs. The blue of glass buildings reflected in puddles. The blue shadows cast by street lamps. The blue of a stranger's scarf, bright like a flag on a gray day. She went further afield. She collected textures of blue. The smoothness of blue sea glass. The roughness of blue wool. The coolness of blue tiles. She collected tastes of blue. The blue freshness of peppermint. The tang of blueberries sharp on the tongue. She went further afield. She collected samples from the sulfurous blue waters of the blue lagoon in Iceland and from the Greek island of Santorini, where all the eggshell white buildings are topped with cobalt blue roofs. She traveled deep into the rainforest of New Guinea to find a bower bird's nest. The bower bird, like Iris, is a collector of blue and builds its home from blue materials. Old scraps of blue ribbon, blue bottle caps, fragments of blue tarpaulin, blue shells, blue feathers, blue berries, blue stone. She looked at the bower bird, fussing over its blue arrangement with a kind of contented recognition. Iris returned to some nolans. The city was even more beautiful than she remembered and even more filled with blue. She noticed the blue smoke curling from chimneys in the early morning. The blue painted shutters on the windows of apartment. The blue awnings over shopfront. The blue neon signs that flickered to life as evening fell. The blue glaze on the pottery sold in the market square. The blue black of the sky just before the night fell. After the excitement of being in the field, the slow methodical work of placing each one of her wondrous samples in the drawers of the registry office, fell like a welcome pause. Iris savored the slow pace of her days. The tiny rituals that punctuated her hours in the registry. From her mid-morning cup of tea to her whispered afternoon chats with her colleagues, to her habit of bidding the shelves a soft goodnight when she left work for the day. At the start of her time at the registry, Iris wasn't sure if she'd be able to carry out her assignment. She couldn't imagine adding more than a dozen blue wonders to the registry. And indeed, on her first morning at work, she thought she had listed all the blues she knew. Now, she felt this work of noticing, observing, and celebrating could go on forever. But soon enough, when she came into the office one morning, there was an envelope lying on Iris's desk. It was not the usual twilight blue colour. It was white in certain lights, apparently grey in others. She opened it, and red. Dear Ms. Whitmore, we congratulate you on the Sarah and careful work you have done cataloging small wonders pertaining to the colour blue. We are entirely satisfied. Your next project is to catalog small wonders pertaining to things that are forgotten. Iris knew she shouldn't feel sad. After all, the registry was pleased with her work. She ought to feel happy. And yet, there were so many wondrous blue things that remained to be cataloged. She wasn't finished. She was nowhere near finished. The paper was folded in half. She unfolded it to read the rest of the note. It said, Don't feel sad, Ms. Whitmore, that you haven't finished the catalog of small wonders pertaining to the colour blue. A full and complete archive of small wonders can never exist. Small wonders are infinite and ever occurring. The work then is not in finishing. It lies in the noticing, the savouring. The appreciating and the remembering. Iris smiled to herself. She sat down at her desk and opened the new notebook which had appeared there. The pages were blank, and when she ran her hand over them, they felt sat and smooth. All of a sudden, her mind was filled with thoughts of forgotten small wonders. The crisp paper money left in a coat pocket all summer and discovered with delight when the weather turned cold again. The joy of a forgotten word or fact suddenly appearing on the tip of your tongue. The hazy half-forgotten contentment of a lovely dream that fades on waking. Flowers and snipped out articles creased into books and forgotten year after year until they are finally taken down from the shell. She took up her pen and began to write. We'll leave our story there for tonight. I loved sharing that with you and wish you sweet dreams.