Tirad spreads the reports of dead pregnant women on his desk. After having read them carefully for a second time, he hasn’t found any useful clues, he gets up from his wooden stool and lies on his bed and stares at the picture of the Saviour Ship on his wall. He had drawn the picture himself, having used up his share of paper for a whole year. He had put together more than hundred sheets of paper and stuck them on the wall and using charcoal, he had sketched the Saviour Ship with as many details as he could. Sometimes the children would come up to his cabin to see the picture. Tirad had asked the Circle to allow him teach drawing to the children. But even though Hurmaz was on his side, the Circle didn’t approve. They had said such courses were never part of the Saviour Ship teachings and there are no pictures or sketches on the documents left from Saviour’s time, and even if it is not forbidden to draw, it would certainly not be encouraged and it is better for the students to focus on their essential studies. Hurmaz had told him then that if any of his students showed interest, Tirad was allowed to teach them privately. But none of them were interested or talented in the matter, sometimes just a little curious. It was enough for them to watch Tirad’s drawing of the Saviour Ship but to trouble themselves to learn the skill was unlikely.

Tirad gets up from his bed and takes a piece of blank paper and a charcoal and sits back on the bed again leaning against the wooden wall by his bed. He starts sketching. The only thing that comes to his mind is the picture of the snake that he had crushed that morning in his class. Whenever he draws, his mind becomes eased and he can focus and order his thoughts. He highlights the spiral patterns of the snake’s skin and outlines the cut on its dead body. He has to put the reports in order, find the latest one and see who were involved in the founding of the dead pregnant body. If he is lucky, he might find the latest witnesses in Oxan and ask them some further questions. But Hurmaz wouldn’t give him the key to the forbidden library without any reason. There must be some ancient documents from Saviour’s time that somehow relates to this matter, perhaps a similar case or some sayings by the Saviour about such happenings. Although he knows all the Saviour Narratives and sayings by heart, sometimes some seemingly unimportant parts of the sayings might over time become omitted from the teachings and find their way to the forbidden library. The library is always dark. He should attend to his other chores and go to find the forgotten handwritten documents of the Saviour at night. He goes back to the cracked spine of the snake for now. He has to highlight the pink tissue from the hard and white bone. Trying not to take up the whole paper, he has sketched the snake in the upper half of it and now it is difficult to detail it with the thick charcoal tip.