Firtscottru Stri Necio
The Firtscottru Stri Necio is the Grand Library of Tondo Talestro, the city formerly isolated for nearly eleven thousand years since the Shattering. It is one of the largest buildings in the city, larger by far than the former palace of the tyrant-queen Ilysandra. It is also one of the only buildings in the Tabre Pere, the Royal District, that has been untouched by the destruction of the recent civil war in which Ilysandra was ousted.
Before the civil war, Tabre Pere had been paved in clear crystal whose internal facets sparkled like the night sky. Every street lamp, sitting bench, and rain shelter was and is made of blacktree, an ebony hardwood cultivated carefully for regular harvests in a region south of the city proper. Every building, small or grand, has been grown from living moonwood, each curve and twist of the wood a work of art that took twenty years to painstakingly shape.
Tabre Pere had been filled with more than just masterpieces of living and sculpted wood; It had also boasted dozens of stone and crystal statues of Ilysandra, all of which had been destroyed during or after the civil war. The bases of shattered statues remain in the district, even some of the recognizable shards left lying on the ground as an unspoken reminder of she who the people cast down… and those who gave themselves in the effort.
The grass in Tabre Pere is a specific breed of paleweed; it looks like bleached driftwood in the sunlight, but at night, under the eye of the moon, it appears to be a silvery light blue. It is no longer perfectly manicured, but grows up in unruly clusters near some of the broken statues, only trimmed short where necessary to allow easier passage for the district's few visitors.
The library itself rises from the rubble around it like a testament to the enduring values of the city’s people. Unlike most of the residential areas of the city, it does not have rooms honeycombed throughout natural pockets of wood; the library is towering, with exorbitantly high ceilings and many floors, as well as separate wings added on thousands of years ago as its contents threatened to overwhelm its interior capacity. Unlike nearly every other structure in the district, the Firtscottru is made purely of stone, its bulk comprised of white marble while its highlights and most beautiful details are crafted of pure moonstone. The entire building glows under moonlight like the moon’s reflection in still water.
The residence of the former queen and those heads of the city before her has never been as grand or as precious as the Firtscottru Stri Necio.
The ground floor of the Firtscottru has nearly a dozen entrances around its perimeter, set in the center of spiraling garden paths that make for a beautiful stroll up to the library. The first and largest room of the library is designed to be both practical and awe-inspiring, featuring a collection of the most comfortable chairs and couches arranged in the middle of a dozen enormous bookshelves that spiral outwards and eventually meet the walls, which are likewise shelves full of tomes and scrolls from all the ages of the city. The primary source of light is a moon-like partial orb set into the ceiling, giving the impression of the real moon itself come down to bless the library and its patrons. Dozens of smaller lamps illuminate the aisles, nooks, and crannies; it all shines with a pale, soft light that eases the heart after the trip through the tattered memories surrounding it.
Even now, a scant twenty years after the end of the war, the Firtscottru is a realm unto itself, and the history outside its walls cannot intrude on the building’s pervasive peace and quietude.
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