Moon Watch

“Jesse, There’s something wrong. Come out here!” Landry called to her husband.

“What?” Jesse asked as he rushed to the back door where Landry was staring out into the night sky. “Is there something wrong with you?”

“No, not me. The moon. Look at it.”

“Umm… Hon, it looks like the moon.”

“Well, yeah, but doesn’t it look like it’s lower than usual? Like it’s closer?”

He laughed a little. “No, it’s just the earth’s atmosphere making it look bigger. It’s just a trick of the light waves in the sky.”

She glared back. “This isn’t the atmosphere. It’s getting closer.”

He rolled his eyes and went back to the couch.

Landry sighed loudly and sat on the porch chair and watched the night sky. Soon she fell asleep.

She dreamed of the moon. It came closer and closer to the earth, finally seeming to stop nearly a third of the way from where it had been and then stayed there. She dreamed of coastal towns underwater from great tidal fluctuations, streams overflowing banks, and even the appearance of another moon in the night sky.

She woke to Jesse calling her name. “Landry! Lan, wake up. Lan!”

“What?” She squinted at him in the bright porch light he had flipped on.

“You were right! It’s all over the news. An asteroid has collided with our moon!
That’s why it looks closer. It is closer! And the astronomers are saying it broke the moon. We might even get hit by the piece that broke off! It’s still too soon to tell. I’m sorry I laughed at you. Come see the news.”

Landry, stunned, turned back to look at the moon. She thought she saw a glimmer of another object in the sky. She shuddered a little turning back toward him, then said, “It won’t hit us. I think we’ll be okay, but it’s gonna make a mess!” She said, and hugged Jesse.

Holding each other’s hands, they went in to hear the news tell them about what all ‘the experts’ had to say on the subject. Landry already knew the real story.