I wasn't surprised to find that no one had claimed it as I grabbed the yellow broom from Meme’s closet, its residence for the entire three years she lived there. I ran out the door and down the narrow stairs, as I did countless times before, leaving the rest of the family to bicker over the expensive items which held less value.
Flying out the front door into the crisp October afternoon, I went to the driveway on the side of the three floor apartment building. Here is where I spent most of my days with her as the broom took different shapes; from a rifle which defended a homeland from an invading empire of insects to a space station on a journey to the far reaches of the sidewalk, Meme and I would travel across aeons without ever leaving the block. Today would’ve been no different, except she was not here to accompany me. Instead she was the broom, or, rather, her casket was.
Today we, the ship’s crew, made of the finest insectoid, woodland, and human soldiers were to pay our last respects to our beloved lieutenant and co-captain. As the casket hovered down the crowed but silent runway, the halls of the ship echoed with our past adventures; the old grapevines in the backyard were our secret training base/command center, the crack in the driveway was a foreign planet that had to be evacuated due to major earthquake activity, the cellar window was a wormhole which caused its fair share of alien invasions, the hedges were the Insectoidian home planet (a surprisingly peaceful place due to no one ever trimming the path).
Finally we reached the end of the runway, the edge of the universe, the sidewalk. As the rockets were readied for the final journey, everyone present bowed their heads, or what looked like heads, and turned to hear the eulogy I was about to give, standing near the head of the casket, the breeze blowing leaves in all directions.
“As we prepare Lt. Helen E. Levreault for her journey,” I began, “I think of where she is now and where she’s going to, both of which I cannot answer. What I do know is where she’s been, from the stories she told and lessons she taught, and, from that, I know she is well prepared for such exploration, wherever that might be. So I say goodbye as I have before, in hope of, one day, hearing the tales of where she went in a way only she could tell it.”
I stepped back from the casket and bowed my head. There was a great rumble from the rockets as she took off into the solar winds. After a minute or so, I turned to those in attendance, “Dismissed.” The word rang from my voice, reaching to the corners of the ship, slowly fading everything back to the October afternoon, to the yellow broom at the end of the driveway.
