A colorful stained glass-style illustration of a castle, a bear, a jar with crabs, a tree with three black birds, and six smaller birds, with a sunset background, titled 'The Raven and the Kingdom of Trade'.

These stories are told in the language of wind and wing, root and wire.

They are not meant to explain—they are meant to remember.

You’ll meet a Raven who walks tightropes and questions leaders, who carries seeds and stories, who leaves behind structures not built for her. The creatures she meets are not just animals, but ideas. Systems. Shadows. Teachers.

Some stories stretch into the Kingdom. Others fly beyond it.

Read them as myth, as metaphor, as memory.

Whichever way you enter, may something in them help you recognize what you’ve carried—and what it might mean to finally set it down.

A Note Before We Begin

Where There Is One Raven, There Are Always More

There was, and there was not, a time when a single Raven left the place where she was supposed to belong.

She had been shaped by a kingdom of velocity—its towers built from ambition, its roads paved in expectation. She had spoken its language. Played its games. Worn its values like feathers pressed tight against her chest. For a while, she believed they were her own.

But belief is not the same as truth. And truth, when it stirs, cannot be silenced for long.

This is not a story of rebellion.
This is not a story of failure.

It is a story of listening—
first to the noise, then to the silence beneath it.
It is a story of remembering—
not just what was, but what could have been,
and what still might be.

The Raven’s journey is not linear.
She circles. She questions.
She leaves and returns and leaves again.

She meets others—creatures of certainty, creatures of doubt, creatures who forget they are part of a forest, not just a structure.
She is misunderstood. She is revered. She is feared. She is forgotten.
But most of all—she sees.

These stories are hers, but they are not hers alone.
They are for anyone who has ever felt themselves shaped by a system too vast to name.
For anyone who has tried to belong without vanishing.
For anyone who has dared to ask, quietly or aloud:

What if I am more than what they see?
What if I leave—and become something else entirely?

This is the Raven’s path.

Step in.

Prologue

© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.