Aliens ate my landlord

On New Year's Eve, while watching fireworks from the living room window, Timorous Beast spotted alien spacecraft. There was just the one at first, drifting slowly across the sky. It was disc-shaped and glowed reddish orange.


"It's the perfect night for them to come - everyone's looking at the fireworks."


"Well, that also means everyone's staring at the sky, doesn't it?"


Beast ignores me. "There's another one. Two of them!" 


And so there were, moving silently, steadily past the whizzing and banging, as though watching. We gazed in awe as they rose and disappeared into the darkness. 


I squinted at the horizon. "You know what I think they are?"


"They're bloody aliens. Don't spoil it."


"You know those Chinese lantern things? People could be setting them off up at the park, and then they're floating this way on the wind" 


"Mmmm, the park is up there, isn't it?"


A few days later, I'm talking to my landlord. "Good Christmas?" she asks.


"Yeah, quiet. At New Year we just stayed in and watched the fireworks from the window. We saw what we thought were aliens, but they turned out to be those Chi-"


"Chinese lanterns? Yeah, we set some of them off, from just up there." She points towards the park.