From the 1986 animated film “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”.

Grandpa’s rathole, or what he called his “lab,” was full of devices in a state of desuetude. But the journal that arrived by messenger just five days after the old man’s body had been delivered to the crematorium told Kiesha an entirely different story.

The stench she had anticipated wasn’t so bad as she steered her way through the haphazard arrangements of arcane machinery. They were all in a state of becoming, but only one had been completed and was ready for use.

Her Dad told her never to visit here, and that the old man was involved in debauchery, his insipid character being capable of nothing else. A month ago, she would have listened.

However, his journal of experiments was punctuated by lengthy missives of how much Grandpa had loved her, and memories of him reading to her, taking her to the playground, spending hours on end comforting her and making her laugh, flooded back into the memory like a cleansing rinse in river water. Kiesha’s recall decompressed.

At last, she’d found it. The journal came with an ancient hatpin which served as the machine’s key. It was made mainly of spruce and looked like something out of a steampunk novel.

Fifteen-year-old Keisha Davis had missed the opportunity to share her Grandpa’s adventures the first time, thanks to her Dad’s prejudge against the old man’s unorthodox view of science and technology. Now, the airship “Graceful Delight” would take her to another realm where he was still alive and young, and together, they would finish his work to save their dying environment, changing it into a thriving biosphere.

Keisha donned the leather jacket, helmet, and goggles, inserted the key, and pressing the big red button in the center of the panel, yelled, “Contact.”

I wrote this for Wordle #193 hosted at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. The idea is to use at least 10 of the 12 words listed in the Wordle in the body of a poem, short story, or other creative work. I used all 12, which are:

1. Rinse
2. Steer
3. Rathole
4. Desuetude (n.)) a state of disuse)
5. Hatpin
6. Decompress
7. Crematorium
8. Spruce
9. Insipid (adj.)) lacking flavor, weak or tasteless, lacking vigor or interest)
10. Stench
11. Debauchery
12. Becoming

I bolded those words in the body of my wee tale so they can be seen more easily.

Find out what happens next in Keisha Takes Off.