Day 709: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: several sightings

After the frat party bust and the booking of the frat boys involved (see the "Before Midnight" and "After Midnight" freewrites), it was 1:00am. Mrs. Magdalena Thornton waited in the break room for the booking to be complete, for although the Rosewood Apartments was in walking distance, her neighbor there would not hear of her walking home alone at that hour.

Mrs. Thornton was secretary to the commissioner of police, but was out that night as representative of the Church in the Midst of Life, whose pantry had been raided by the aforementioned frat boys as revenge against Mrs. Onyx Baxter, a ministry leader who had called them on bad behavior earlier in the week. That raid had led to Captain H.F. Lee, Mrs. Thornton's neighbor, looking into the case and pulling together some night shift officers to catch the boys involved.

Mrs. Thornton had come along because she knew Captain Lee – mild-mannered in the office where he handled the cold cases of his division, potentially dangerous in the field because of Special Forces background and a load of PTSD. The case had enraged him, but he would look at her face and keep calming himself down. No one had been seriously injured, and the incident was over by 1:00, when he came to walk her home.

One minute out the door, and Mrs. Thornton had been startled by a great flash of light in the sky. She jumped – and landed in Captain Lee's strong arms.

“Easy does it, Mrs. Thornton. I've got you.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, that's a failed satellite, making its final descent. There have been several sightings of it this week as its orbit decayed, but, it just hit the atmosphere.”

“Oh, is that all?”

They laughed, and watched the satellite burning down in silence until Mrs. Thornton started singing new words to a well-known Disney tune …

“Don't wish on that star right there … it may fall down in your hair!
Flaming space junk cannot make your dreams come true!”

Captain Lee almost fell over, laughing, and nearly took Mrs. Thornton with him.

“This is how I get you back, for this week's two laugh attacks,
Never count out Maggie Thornton's sense of fun!”

They had to sit down on the bench outside the Rosewood Apartments, trying not to wake up their neighbors, especially after Captain Lee added his verse...

“I surrender – it must be, from great-great-grand-nephew Lee –
Caught unwary, laid out fairly, quite undone!”

And they laughed until they cried.

“Thank you, Mrs. Thornton – God knows we needed that laugh, working where we do!” Captain Lee said as he walked her to her door.

“I know,” she said. “We'll sleep good now.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then covered her with his full smile. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Thornton went to sleep dreaming of that smile, and sensing what it signified...