"This pandemic is never going to end!" complained the shopkeeper.

Old Jose nodded silently, as he looked around the square that wasn't as empty as it had been a few weeks ago. The reports of effective medicines or vaccines that had brought hope of a quick resolution to the outbreak in the first few months had trickled away to almost nothing.

The shopkeeper tugged at the mask that seemed to cling more stickilily to his face with every breath, but he didn't take it off. "People are going crazy Joe. News said they found a body in the refrigerator of some lady's house."

Jose shrugged. It was horrifying enough, and he pitied the kids in uniform who had to discover such things in the course of their jobs, but it was also normal. People had always been their own worst enemies. The darkest stories in the world were about horrible things that people did to other people.

"The whole world is going crazy," the man continued. "Animals are running wild, and even monsters are coming out of hiding." He shook his head. "They say there are dozens of dragons running around Europe! It's like the tabloids are taking over… man… I just don't know, maybe it really is the end of the world, only it's taking longer than everyone expected."

"Monsters huh?" Jose finally replied as he fingered the shell that rode in his pocket. The surface still maintained the temperature it had held when it had been placed in his hand over a month ago. Magic, or something so advanced that an old man like him couldn't differentiate it from magic. "Can't be worse than people," he added comfortingly.

The shopkeeper gave him a sour look and complained, "That's really not very reassuring is it? Especially with all the rioting and looting on the news!"

Jose waved a hand at the people who were rushing nervously back and forth to buy goods and services from non-essential shops that had finally been allowed to open again. "Most people are just struggling to survive. Me and them, and even you, we're just doing what we can. But scared groups of people are like herd animals, they panic and do whatever they see others doing."

The shopkeeper looked at the crowd of people that wasn't packed enough that he would have called it a crowd half a year ago. Their faces were covered like his, in masks, scarves, or bandanas. "I bet those countries where everyone keeps their face covered and they never shake hands are all laughing at us now," he said sourly.

Jose smiled widely enough to crinkle his old eyes into the wrinkles that surrounded them. "Maybe. But it's not so bad to have fashions and customs flow both ways. We'll adapt," he assured the younger man as he adjusted the scarf he now wore in a fashion he'd learned more than half a century ago. "Life goes on. It always finds a way."

--

There were bees in the raspberries. It was also a good year for dandelions, and she'd made dandelion jelly for the first time in her life. And she'd swear she'd seen a dragon roaming the mountain, but right now, in front of her eyes, there were bees in the raspberries.

There were fat fuzzy ones with black jackets, and smaller ordinary ones in stripes. Some were more brown than yellow, and some were almost grey. At least four kinds that she could see. They all looked busy as they hummed quietly to and fro.

She'd come out to the edge of the road to see if there were any berries forming yet, and there were many little green budding berries forming. And there were many bees. The decline and potential extinction of bees had been everywhere in the media for the last couple of years.

She'd mostly stopped watching the headlines in the last few months, because since the world-wide epidemic had begun, most of the news had been even more depressing than usual. Across the world millions of cases had been reported. The fact that this was a small fraction of the seven billion inhabitants was difficult to focus on when everyone already seemed to know someone who was sick. But here in an ordinary patch of what was usually considered weeds, were more bees than rumors implied might be living in the entire country.

She looked back toward the scruffy patch of grass that struggled to give an impression of a lawn. It was doing better than in some years despite the reduced watering schedule, and the perennial flowers around the border actually looked rather nice, but she'd put the change down to spending more time at home this spring, and there certainly weren't enough flowers to explain this apparent boom in the local bee population.

She pulled out her phone and turned the camera lens toward the bees. She looked at the picture of the fat bumblebee that she'd captured for a long time. It was displayed much larger than life, and in finer detail than she could actually see when she looked at it with her own eyes.

Somehow she'd expected an attempt to take a picture of the bees to come out like her attempts to take pictures of the dragon that she'd seen moving through the trees at the far edge of her neighbor's property. Those had looked like most of her wildlife pictures ever had, slightly blurred scenic places where a bird had just been. Places where a dolphin had just leapt out of the water. Fuzzy impressions of animal butts.

A bee landed on her sleeve, and she froze. But it seemed to find nothing of interest, and lifted itself back into the air before her heart had even recovered from the initial thump of surprise. Bees rarely stung people, she reminded herself, as she moved away from the prickly brambles.

When she got back to her desk, she opened a page that showed the most recent headlines. There wasn't a single word about bees anywhere in the list. Deaths, crimes, infections rates, new outbreaks, politics… Bird migrations? The word dragon caught her eye, but it was only an article about a space capsule reaching the space station.

A cheeky smile curved her cheeks despite the list of horrible things going on in the world. Aside from a horrible virus trying to end the world as they'd known it, the most common lament about the decade had been, "Where are the flying cars?" But she could easily dismiss an article about a space station as ordinary and boring.

She made the photo of the fat bumblebee her wallpaper, and decided to look for dragons.

--

Amaru stared at the phone in his hands. Of course, he'd understood that it was used for communication, but somehow he had been using it all this time without ever investigating the device itself. The access to information that it provided had occupied all of the attention that he'd given it.

Chris and Anne had laughingly created him a profile page for one of the popular social sites that used a picture of his true form. He'd gotten used to looking at the flat pictures the devices showed, and now someone had messaged him. What had him staring wasn't the text contained in the message, but the picture of the other dragon.

She was familiar. And despite being filtered through the language of the human tribe that had apparently conquered at least a third of the entire world with their tongue, if not their rule, so was her manner of speaking.

She had written: "Teacher! I can't tell you how amazed I am to see your image here, but I just knew that you would love these devices! I have so much to tell you! Let's meet up soon!"