Space

Above the cream-colored silhouettes of rooftops, and not too far into the night sky, the three lights of the space shuttle made it's obelisk form in the sky. I watched it there, watched the lights of the boosters as they drifted off from the other, breaking away and falling down to earth. It was beautiful.
"It's so beautiful", I said to him as he held me in my arms. I pressed my face into his chest as he and the rest of them looked up at the shuttle.
"What--" some one began, and I turned back to see two bright, hazy rings, like circular explosions of starlight, surrounding the far away light. We all watched the rings dissipate like thin, wispy clouds.
"They're dead." Someone said.
"We're watching history." Said another.
"No." I said, trying to rationalize the bright rings in the sky. I tried to explain to them, while watching little pieces of light float down through the sky like tiny, burning ashes.
"They're dead." He says, still holding me. "Funny how it was such a beautiful thing, and now they're dead."
I heard someone else in the group suggest that it might not have been a manned flight. It was easier to think that. I nodded and pressed myself back into his shirt.