El was restless: Will could tell.
It had been over a month since he had been pulled into the nightmare-world known as 'the upside down', and he still he found himself on edge.
The things that had once been normal, everyday fare to him now seemed alien and unrelatable.
The sound of car horns
Of children playing
Even of dogs barking and birds chirping.
None of it did anything for Will, save to put him on edge.
In a moment of sadness, he realized that he could never have his world back again.
It was forever lost, Just like the Will Byers that had been taken by the monster.
He sighed, and mentally steeled himself.
The old Will was gone for good, so now it was time to embrace the new one.
'It's not easy' said El
Will peddled his bike, enjoying the sun on his face.
'Letting go, I mean'
Swerving to avoid a fallen-over trashcan, Will took a little-used dirt path that would take him- well, 'them' -to Mike's house.
'I just wanted things to go back to normal' he said.
El was silent for a moment.
'At least you had a good normal to remember'
Will suddenly felt guilty for being selfish.
El had grown up being beaten and abused by cold, unempathetic men in white coats, and no one had been there to rescue him.
The two spent the rest of trip in silence.
El could feel something nearby:
Something powerful.
Something familiar.
She had been living with Jim for close to a year now, and despite his obsession with security, she still managed to sneak out and see Mike from time to time, even though the risk of doing so was great.
The young girl had helped Jim locate Misses Byers' lost Son Will in the bad world -the 'upside down' as Mike and his friends had called it-, and after the rescue, the Man had thanked her, and given her extra eggo's and freedom's for a time.
But it was obvious that something had happened there: something that had shaken Hopper, and while she was loath to intrude on the thoughts of the Man she had come to see as 'Father', her brief, surface-level examinations had revealed a tiny glimpse of three figures flying through the air, one of them being him.
It made no sense at all.
Unless...
Jane shoved down her last eggo, opened the window in her room, and climbed outside, carefully closing it behind her.
The powerful presence she had sensed was on the move, and it was one she had felt before in her terrifying mental forays into the upside down:
A consciousness that, unlike the horrifying master of that world, had seemed surprisingly intelligent, and even more surprisingly of ill temperament towards the monsters that inhabited the nightmarish place.
How it had gotten here, into the normal world was a troubling thought: one that only investigation could put to rest.
Taking off in the direction that the psychic emanations seemed to be going in, El steeled herself for the inevitable fight.
Whatever it was, she was going to confront it, and if it threatened Mike or her friends, it was going to die.