#2, Encantado

I step out onto the marble streets. The perfect scene that unfolds before me is wasted on me. What do I care about the expertly manicured lawns, carefully cut hedges, and homes that always look freshly painted? I have seen it all before, and I am certain I will see it all again.

I live in one of the finest homes in the Encante. That is what you are afforded when you are practically royalty. There is no such thing as Royalty among the Encantado, but there are lineage rights, and I descend from a very high profile bloodline. The “honor” of being a Drake is also wasted on me. The Drakes have several homes in the Encante, and when I had come of age, I was told to choose one. I did not choose my home because of the neighborhood. Choosing the “right” neighborhood is not a consideration in the Encante. There is no crime, there is no ghetto. Just perfectly manicured yards, perfectly built homes, with perfect decorating, and “perfect” people. If you can call us that, people, I mean.

No, I had chosen this home for one reason, and one reason only. It is the furthest home away from the city hall, a place I spend as little time, and as little thought on as possible. I visit my mother and father there on occasion, when I am forced to pay my respects to the Elders. I had visited my Grandfather there weekly when I was very young, but now, the city hall only makes me feel oppressed and antsy, much like everything in the Encante makes me feel.

The city hall is a place where my kind gathers to philosophize, to banter, and to generally flaunt our superiority in brains, beauty, and brawn. How you can flaunt something when those you are superior to are not present is beyond me, and yet the Encantado still seemed able to do it. Of course, the city hall also serves to house the governing body of our little Utopia, the Counsel of Elders. The government my Grandfather helped to start seventy thousand years before. The government my parents have served in for the past 200 years, and are still serving in, and the government I am expected to serve in twenty short years from now when I am 250.

My Grandfather, along with some of his “cronies,” as he liked to call them, formed the first Counsel seventy thousand years ago as a way to establish order and accountability to our race. We are a long-lived race, generally considered immortal. Things come easily to us, and because of that, corruption is common. Before the Counsel, it is said that chaos ruled, but now, ah now, everything is perfect. Everyone is well behaved, there are rules, and strictures that govern the people, and they are followed, and enforced, and you have two choices in life. You choose death, or you choose government service. I still haven’t figured out which I think is a worse fate.