Eight places, in a fixed order
A spring is where water begins and the sea is where it ends, so the order can never drift: the Sleepy Forest, the Sleepy Springs, the Snoozy Stream, the Sleepy Waterfall, the Sleepy Lake, the Starlit Shore, and — heard, never arrived at — the Sleepy Sea. Every place goes to sleep in its own way, and the stream stops babbling sound first, then surface.
You choose how far you are going before you set off, and then nobody has to decide anything else. Choosing is thinking, and thinking is the enemy at bedtime. The whole route is here.
What night time stories are actually for
A story after dark is not entertainment that happens late. Its job is to take a child who is still busy — still going over the day, still a little cross about the teeth — and walk them somewhere quieter, one place at a time, until the walking is the only thing left. That is why nothing goes wrong in ours. There is no jeopardy anywhere in this world, and that is a rule rather than a habit: tension lifts a heart rate, and a lifted heart rate at nine o’clock costs you an hour.
The other half of the job is sameness. Night time stories work the way a bedtime routine works — the same phrases return, the same places arrive in the same order, and the goodnights are said name by name at the end of every single one. A child who has walked the route a few times knows what is coming next, and knowing what is coming next is most of what a routine is for. Nothing has to be followed, so nothing has to be stayed awake for.
It does not matter whether you hear the end
Each story is told slowly, with the same phrases returning again and again, and it ends on a held sleeping frame rather than an ending. If your child is asleep by the waterfall, the story has done its job better than if they heard it all.