*First in a collaborative series between myself (story) 
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In the 23rd century, you have never really arrived; space is the final frontier, and so you have never made it to your final destination unless, of course, you are dead, and, those of us who have deep faith know that even that is not the end. The difference about the 23rd century, as opposed to the centuries before mass space travel, is that the concept of “I have arrived” is no longer common.
Still, when a royal family called to invite my family to represent humanity at a coming-of-age ceremony for their princess daughter, it was one of those moments that told me that at 42, I had been blessed to be on a good journey. One had to be blessed and specially blessed to have beautiful, powerful, grateful friends like my friend above, on her day of revelation and coronation.
My middle child, Marcus Valerian Kirk, tried to explain what having such blessing required to his little sister Laura Telluria in this way: “So, there's Mom, and she's an admiral like Cousin J.T. [Kirk], so she can wear her dress uniform. For Dad, he's a businessman, so he can wear his best business suit. Us? Yeah, we're gonna need to wear our Sunday best – our Easter Sunday best – we're about to meet real kings, queens, princes and princesses, and even though none of them are the Lord Jesus, they just expect the Easter Sunday type of show.”
My baby daughter, who was five, heaved a huge sigh, and looked at her baby brother Laurence.
“It would be so much easier to just be wearing a diaper!” she said.
She was right, sort of … a lot of pressure from other people came to the family … folks who had been mad for YEARS that my wife and I had gotten together and had been moving forward in having our own were BIG MAD that we were getting invited to be in the presence of royals because of what I had done in life. The kid cousin of the most famous man in the galaxy wasn't supposed to be able to do that. The husband of the most powerful woman in the fleet was supposed to be riding her coat tails, not taking her to events she couldn't access on her own.
“Yes, but, I always knew you were going places and I wanted to go with you,” the admiral said to me. “You listen to these fools too much, but tomorrow, you'll feel what the rest of us already know about you.”
Sure enough … it was a strange and wonderful moment to be at the coming-of-age of the princess, to enjoy seeing her as a grown woman in her fine green gown at the pre-coronation ball – that's the photo above – and then to proceed with the other guests to the palace throne room to see her come out at last in her crown and neck wear. In her culture, the idea that “the government shall be upon his shoulders” was a literal reality, and, at last, my old friend took her place beside the king her father, at last endowed with the symbols and the power of rule over the vast star system that was theirs to administer.
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On this day, the final form of her name was revealed, and I knew the long journey it had been for her to hear this resolution of her name … spelled in English writing as Bazelle, but English does not cover the importance of vowel sounds in her language, the indication of power and powerlessness by vowel choice and placement.
I had learned in the years since meeting her that the sound of an A as in AH is an easier, less energetic sound than the long E, which requires the lifting of the tongue and causes vibration as the sound waves hit the different portions and shape of the mouth … so it was a big deal when we all knelt at the appropriate time and her full, final name was pronounced in her language.
“Ba-zell-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
The harmony on that long, long E … the vowel sound of royal power, carried off like the E natural with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony finally reaches C major in its last movement, but in a choir perhaps nine time the size and ninety times the power of a symphony orchestra … from regular notes to sub-bass and above soprano …the floor of the room began to shake like a mighty San Francisco earthquake … but nothing fell over, because Princess Bazelle stood in the center of the room, and balanced all things by her power.
It was right now for her to possess that kind of power. She always had it in her, even in childhood … but it was just coming of age to where she knew how to use it. Her father and mother and elder siblings gazed on her with love and satisfaction at how perfectly she upheld herself as the power of her people was vested in her as it was in them. And, when she raised her hand graciously, all became silent with equal grace.
Princess Bazelle's first official royal statement showed the wisdom she now possessed, and the thoughtfulness – she had a deep understanding of the challenges in the galaxy in the second half of the 23rd century going into the 24th, and her father smiled broadly and looked relieved … he was even by his people's standards well advanced in years, and to see his youngest child at last ready to take up the charge he knew he would soon have to leave to his children was a great moment for him as well. He kept smiling as his daughter surprised the crowd and looked over at me.
“Noble Kirk – Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-irk.”
There was that long E sound, and the respect factor in the room went up several light years toward me and my family – not that it was low at first, because to be human and to be present meant you were worthy of respect. Princess Bazelle's people were not racist, nor were they given in adulthood to petty human/humanoid jealousies; their attitude was that you belonged wherever you are.
“Come to the place of honored friends, your family with my family, because without your wisdom and kindness, this day would have been much longer in coming for me, and their Royal Majesties might not have lived to see it. Come forward, Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-irk, and family.”
“See, this is why we had to be Easter Sunday sharp,” Marcus Valerian whispered to his sister Laura.
“Yeah, but, Laurence is still wearing his diaper!” Laura complained, “but, okay, we'll just do this!”
My baby daughter hates dress up as much as I do, but I picked her up and kissed her, and the king smiled broadly once again. We bowed to him as a unit, and then went to the place lit up for us for the rest of the ceremony … and the princess handed Laura a toy for being obedient, an near-infinite series of interlocking rings that any curious five-year-old could play with until age six, trying to figure out how many rings and how they worked together … in the princess's own culture, that was the representation of the table of the elements and how they worked together.
“Thank you!” Laura said, and was happy to share with her eight-year-old brother as they got through the rest of the ceremony.
“Your baby princess is well-behaved for her age,” I heard the familiar voice in my mind, “but I expected she would be because her father, too, has come fully of age.”
That was the king, who, in his old age, had developed telepathy – that power came late in life for his species, when wise enough to handle it. Of course that was old news, for he was very, very old. He had that power when I met him, which was a good thing because he understood my intentions in my first and second interactions with his youngest daughter.
The king's wisdom clarified the strangeness of the event for me as well … his daughter had arrived at the next stage of her life, and so had I … to a point, we were sitting in our relative positions of life because of the 26-year journeys we had both been on while meeting.
My wife is a quarter-Vulcan, and so also mildly telepathic … I felt her mind registering the king speaking with me telepathically, but she did not attempt to cut into the feed, as it were. She just asked the question when we were back at our accommodations.
“I don't think you ever told me the full story of how this family knows you and apparently likes you so much, Mark.”
“Well, no, because it hardly seems real to me sometimes … but you figure if I could walk up, hit on, and lead a full fleet admiral down the isle at age 24, I had to have some experience in playing ball out way, way out of my league … and it literally started just like that, when I was 16 years old and on my fifth commercial shipping run … .”
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