Editing Newsletter/Winter 2009 (section)

== How I Met and  Married a Romulan Princess  ==
<small>by [[Chance Raschen|Charlie Raschen]]</small>
:'''Editor’s note:''' ''This is a fictional piece of creative writing from one of our members about his character, Chance Raschen.''

When I first met T’Lela, she was a Sub-Centurion in the Romulan military, and I was on one last job before starting classes at Hardy-Knox University to become a licensed ship’s captain.[[Image:Chance Raschen uniform.jpg|250px|left|thumb|[[Chance Raschen]] is played by Charlie Raschen on the [[USS Rosenante]]]]

Some folks have asked me how I could have married a Romulan, let alone get her father’s blessing, considering how xenophobic, as a society, Romulans are. Well I tell you what; it sure as hell wasn’t easy.  My mother, Margaret, was on a business trip to secure licensed shipping privileges from the magistrate inside a Romulan Province. I traveled with her and served as her bodyguard.  Coincidently, T’Lela served as a bodyguard for the Magistrate S’Adashiv, who happened to be her father.

During one of their many meetings together my mom had convinced him to continue the meeting over dinner, just the two of them at an eatery of his choice. T’Lela and I sat at a table close at hand just in case one of them attacked the other. You see, being Scottish, my mom is very outspoken and has a temper to boot.  As they spoke, T’Lela and I started talking about how our parents treated business like war.

Mom and I spent the night at the Magistrate’s estate. After my mom and her dad went to their rooms for the night, T’Lela and I stayed up drinking and talking. That was my introduction to Romulan Ale. She and I woke up the next morning curled up with each other without any clothes, under a blanket, on an animal skin rug in front of the fireplace. She wrapped the blanket around herself while I pulled my pants on. As we walked down one of the hallways toward our rooms, we were startled when the door to her father’s room suddenly swung open and almost hit me in the face.

T’Lela’s dad looked really peeved when he saw us, so you can imagine how the situation evolved when my mom walked out of his room wrapped in a blanket as well. My mom and I pointed at each other and neither one of us could keep from laughing. T’Lela and S’Adashiv started yelling at one another, basically demanding the same answers from the other. Come to find out, S’Adashiv had been a widower for the better part of a decade and well, as mom explained it to me, one thing led to another.  Hey, they were both consenting adults, why not? For that matter, the same could be said for T’Lela and me.
[[Image:T'Lela.jpg|200px|thumb|right| T'Lela]]
T’Lela’s side however, turned out to be a little different. It so happened that I turned out to be the first male to be interested in her that didn’t give a damn about her father’s power, wealth, or influence. I didn’t need or want his; my family had just as much of both as his family.

When my mom and I left Romulus after she got the shipping permits, she and S’Adashiv continued to keep their physical relationship a matter of convenience but pursued an active business relationship. T’Lela and I continued to court until we got married the week I graduated from Hardy-Knox University. Unfortunately the next week the Cardassian-Federation War started.