Another bush rustled behind us, followed by a sound similar to chattering teeth. But even more startling was the trail behind us was now obscured by trees.

Was this part of the lesson? How was this supposed to teach us anything? And it’s all so sudden!

Paige fell to the ground. Her eyes were on the verge of tears. “I don’t… I don’t like this! Not at all!”

Kimberly bent down and comforted her with head rubs. “It’s… it’s okay. This is probably just our first course or whatever. I’m scared, too. Do you think we can rely on each other to get through this?”

Paige wiped a tear from her eye and nodded as Kimberly helped her up from the ground.

“Are you okay, Tiger? Just know I’m here to support you, too,” Kimberly said with a gentle smile.

Despite the uncertainty of the situation, she was compelled to reassure us with her supportive demeanor. She was cute, caring, and extremely pro-social. She’d make for an ideal girlfriend.

My heart fluttered, but I pushed the sentiment aside for now. I walked over to the forked sign and the hexagon in the middle.

“I think this has something to do with telling us which path we should take,” I said.

Kimberly walked to my side and scrunched her eyes. “Well, sure. But how is that shape going to help us with anything?”

It was a triangle with three additional triangles carved on its sides and bottom in sprinkles. Perhaps those individual pieces were part of the clue. But something seemed familiar about the way they were placed…

“Oh, right! A Koch snowflake!” I blurted out.

“A Koch, what now?” Kimberly repeated.

“It’s a fractal curve, essentially a repetitive pattern through sequenced iteration. Look at the smaller sprinkles between the carved lines. That’s what gave it away.”

Kimberly tilted her head. “Oh, if you say so. I still see a triangle.”

I crouched onto the ground, drew the initial triangle into the dirt, and then wrote the perimeter and area properties with the value N. If this was a Koch snowflake, the first iteration would supply us with the necessary constants and production rules to recreate the hexagon.

A Koch curve usually self-replicated into six additional copies, with a larger replica at its center. That being said, the formula should supply us segment length for the following iterations.

After sketching the hexagon during the second iteration, I removed the baselines each time I changed the constant area and added two more lines to the equilateral shape. Soon after, the triangle turned hexagon and became a distinct snowflake with intricate exterior patterns.

Kimberly crouched beside me, leaning in close to view the evolving pattern. Her perfume was sweet and delicate, almost making me want to lean in closer for a better smell.

“Oh, look! The pattern is shifting to the left a little!” She said.

Though I was captivated by her fragrance, she was right that the top portion of the Koch snowflake slanted to the left the more I drew the lines.

“If I made the correct calculations, it should be correct to go left then,” I said. “Though we should only go if we agree as a group.”

Kimberly threw a thumbs up with a nod. “If you think you’re correct, I fully believe in you.”

Yeah, she really made it hard not to get the wrong idea. I glanced over at Paige, squatting down. She nodded her head with an acknowledging smile.

“Okay then, we’ll go left,” I said and walked down the path.

We then stumbled upon another fork in the road, but the sign had nothing written on it. A few candy flowers between the trees shaped like upside-down pitchers spewed fractal patterns as sweet-smelling dust.

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After deciphering the correct pattern, it didn’t stop there. Counting interchanging petals, measuring the angles on sharp rocks, and even solving problems with mathematical principles I had to create on the fly. A random clue or math tool would appear if we were stuck on a problem for a while. We were just eight signs in, but my head was ready to explode.

Sprinkles of sunlight glimpsed through the trees as we approached a wide clearing. A wide chocolate waterfall was in the distance. Below the sundae river was a white-cookie bridge connecting to the other side. Although it was an artificial world, it was nice to be in a space that was more open.

“Hey guys, look. There’s some writing on some of the cookies.” Kimberly said.

Some of the cookies connecting the bridge’s floor were carved with phrases, words, and emblems. Assuming this was another puzzle, I tried to find matches between them, but they were too distinct to be categorized one by one.

“Oh, hello there,” Paige said, her back turned to a red licorice rope.

She turned around, revealing a small blue gummy bear in her hands. The bear hopped onto her shoulder and beckoned her closer.

“Ah… okay… I see…” Paige nodded as the gummy bear whispered in her ear. “He says to cross the river, we need to look at the cookie and figure out a riddle or interpret the language. If we try to step on a cookie without completing the puzzle…”

The gummy bear pounced through the air and landed on the first foot-size cookie. It then immediately crumbled, sending him and several cookie crumbs into the murky chocolate water.

Paige gasped and ran over to the edge, but there was no sign of the gummy bear.

“That’s… that’s awful…” Kimberly said, glancing at me for commiseration.

“Yeah, that was kind of sad. But he gave us useful information, so let’s use that in his memory.” I said.

Even with the instructions given, the only thing I concluded was that the bigger slabs of cookie were harder puzzles while the single-foot cookies were easier due to the complexity of the riddles. But none of it clicked.

As I was about to share my perplexity with the others, I saw them crouched over a cookie with dutiful gazes.

“You see these inscriptions over here? Don’t you think they’re similar to that cookie a few spaces over?” Kimberly said.

Paige nodded and tapped on one of the first steps. “A kingdom made of black and white, though the sun still colors it day and night.. Hm…”

Was that a riddle? I couldn’t come up with any for certain answers off the top of my head. Maybe the city is made of glass, and if light refracted through it from the sun, it would create a spectrum of colors like a rainbow. But the riddle included night, meaning that the occurrence wouldn’t happen naturally. I was stumped. Maybe we could come back to it later.

“How about we try another-“

“It’s simple, really.” Paige interrupted me and hopped onto the cookie step. “It’s a chessboard. Alternating black and white squares and a kingdom of pawns, queens, and knights moving full of life despite the time of day.”

The cookie then gleamed, clearing itself of the riddle and creating a set of words on its surface.

“Ah, these are like the symbols we saw on the cookie a few feet up. I believe the lines and dots above the symbols over there can be translated on this next step. Then maybe we can translate it to modern text with the image interpretations.” She said, jumping to the next step.

This was the most I’ve heard her talk. Guess she was enjoying herself. As I walked over, I wanted to flip if I had the capacity and energy to do it. Riddles accompanied by smaller squares, morse code, symbolic linguistics, and other languages were solved in Paige’s wake. She was already halfway across the bridge as she bent down to look at another symbolic block in front of her. Even Kimberly stopped to gawk at her workmanship.

I didn’t understand at first, but I got what they were trying to achieve with these classes. People excelled at different things. Some were natural talents, while others were hard-workers who studied their craft diligently. If you tried to make a person a jack-of-all-trades, forcing them to look through the multiple semi-transparent lenses of academia, the most clear will be left if but all forgotten.

Even though I excelled at math, it still took Kimberly’s opinion of the shape for me to draw the conclusion of its origin. If she hadn’t given her input, then who knew how long it would’ve taken me to figure it out since I usually perceived things analytically rather intuitively. And who knew, possibly the quietest girl in our class, was a high-performing student in linguistic analysis?

I doubted the LPL system, thinking that Kimberly and the others would have to work harder to keep up with the higher-ability students, but this changed my perspective completely. Their talents just needed a chance to shine.

The bridge had a path of several stable-glowing cookies we could cross. The rushing fudge below us blew hot air from beneath that made us take off our blazers.

“The last riddle said that we needed to scale that waterfall and gather some samples on the ecosystem at the top,” Paige said.

She then pointed over to a licorice tree with a long red candy rope hanging from its branches.

“I think that’s what we’re going to need to climb. But what about a hook?”

Kimberly shot her hand up with a gasp. “Oh, I know! My dad and I used to go hiking all the time! I think I saw some hard candy leaves while we were doing those math equations in the forest. I’ll find the first one. Then we can split up after I show you how it should look.”

I was ready to follow them, but Paige looked back with a nod. “Oh… right. The riddle also said that you should continue down the path, Tiger. I think the teacher may be waiting for you.”

I was bummed at being kicked out. The next assignment seemed sort of fun, at least compared to the linguistics stuff. But I wasn’t going to complain. I headed past the bridge into another part of the forest.