In which, Robin Buckley's younger sister tries to help save Hawkins from Vecna while nursing a broken heart over her dead boyfriend and being a part of an unexpected love triangle.
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Contains dark themes (drug use, death, g...
( songs for the chapter ) solitude // billie holiday wasteland, baby! // hozier
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The woods were eerily tranquil.
The birds were chirping, the trees rustling with the wind and the dry leaves crunching underneath them with every step each of them made. Everything around seemed painfully normal. Nature in it's beautiful natural form, quiet and peaceful and pleasant to be in. The woods are supposed to be creepy, some people swear they are. Won't enter even when offered a generous sum of money, especially now, with a 'serial killer' on the loose.
But Ruby just breathed in the pure, fresh air of the environment surrounding her. How can this be creepy?
It was truly beautiful. The calmness of it. Almost as if the earth decided to be oblivious to the reality that has bestowed itself upon the once quiet small town of Hawkins. The air smelled like tree bark and fallen leaves, even a hint of wet soil, mud that the melted snow of the winter that just passed seeped through and claimed as its new home.
Funny, how the seasons pass, weather changes, but the land, the earth, drinks it up and cradles it in its hands, keeping it safe. Leaving small traces of each one of the precious seasons in the soil. Fall as orange, yellow and brown leaves that decorate the ground until the snow covers them, or until the rain washes them away. Winter as the wet smell that lingers on the sidewalks, roads and grass, and the inch of depth that adds itself to Lover's Lake. Spring as the relieving breeze of early summer and scattered flower petals. Summer, as the misleading rays that are there, but aren't quite as warm in the fall as they were in the previous season. The change is always there. It always lingering, but Mother Nature is still there to remind you of what once was. Of what has been left behind to make room for a different wonder.
So Ruby wondered, how? How can nature not sense that something was wrong? That the balance has been broken somehow? How can the woods stay so perfectly undisturbed, so untroubled by the darkness that is consuming them and their surroundings? Their Hawkins? How can the trees stay so green and vibrant, how can they dance along to the music of the wind when people who are too young have died? How can the ground nourish itself off of the corpses of her classmates? It's a dark, sick thought, probably. But she knows how simple biology works. She knew what happens to bodies when put in the ground. When buried.
Ruby didn't really like biology. She was more of a chemistry girl, but she did like cultures. She loved studying them. Learning their languages. Their religions. Like Robin, she knew several different languages, and studied different cultures in her free time (most of her freshman year, actually) sitting in the corner of the library, hidden behind a wall of books.
One culture that caught her attention and challenged her, was that of the Jews. Their languages were extremely hard to master, but that's not the point. In Judaism, they don't really believe in coffins, especially the religious people. They believe in allowing the bodies to decompose naturally. Letting the body give back to the earth, to nourish it and take care of it even after death. That's where she knows that quite creepy information from. So, again she wonders how is Mother Nature so calm, how the breaches of the soil are going unnoticed by her. No rain clouds, just the quiet, gentle wind and rustle of the leaves.
