Seeing is Believing

The predawn sky is very beautiful in early summer. Deepest blue, not quite black, and filled with stars that even the lights of the towns and villages set across the countryside cannot dim. Last night was cloudless and absolutely still: the house is on a hilltop so no wind at all is unusual enough to have woken me.

'I'll just go and look at it all from the big terrace' I thought, and set off from bed, opening and closing doors quietly. Passing through the salotto I glanced from the window (we don't usually close the shutters on the second floor in fine weather) and stopped dead.

An enormous white/blue light with two smaller but even more intense lights, side by side beneath it, was shining lowish on the horizon, to the east of the village. I stared and stared, then opened the window in case the glass was doing something odd with the light from a particularly bright morning star. It stayed the same.

So I went on through the kitchen and the dining room, unbarred the terrace door and went outside. From the far end of the terrace you can see further round behind the church to the north and east. There was another one! Just as bright, not doing much. So neither did I. Just stared at them for some minutes, comparing them with other things in the sky. They didn't look like anything else.

What is the etiquette of these occasions? Wake the house? At that moment the church struck 4.30. In the end I went back to bed. They'd gone when I woke at quarter to seven, or become invisible in the full daylight.

Update:

I did look the last two evenings. No sign of the bright whatever they weres. It's overcast this evening so I wouldn't have looked again. When I mention it to people they don't believe me. I don't mind, but I do wonder how many oddities are not mentioned for fear of the smiles and then glances at the wine rack I've had. If we don't say things, no matter how outlandish, they will not be part of our understanding.