He doesn’t like the feel of it. The pull in his stomach as the classroom dissolves around them and is replaced quite suddenly with some vast desert.
This place is certainly more comfortable, considering the hundreds of miles he’s traversed during the course of his lifetime. He casts a cursory glance out into the canyon. At first glance, it does not look particularly unwelcoming and he does not balk at the thought that he might have to cross it.
What gives him pause is the mathematical aspect of it. He is a simple man of simple means and this assignment makes even less sense to him than the chemistry assignment. His brow furrows and he struggles to comprehend the math of it without an equation spoken in plain English. The only information Tir gives them involves the trails and the warning that, while it takes five hours to cross the desert, their buckets will only hold four hours’ worth of water.
A few of them exchange skeptical glances and, when Tir disappears, Bethlehem finds himself edging closer to a group of four who are talking in low voices. He doesn’t ask their names and they don’t look familiar, but they seem much smarter than him – based simply on the fact that they are at least attempting to work out a solution while he’s not even certain he understands the problem. They accept him into their midst and explain their plan to him.
They will set out on the trail marked with a five. (As they speak, most of his classmates seem to choose the trail marked with a one – surely it seems the most logical one, because one is a smaller number than five but he is in no position to argue – he must entertain the idea that it is a trick question). They will move in a single file line. Tir did not specify that they had only five hours from the moment he disappeared, only that they would each have to make it there in five hours. They will set out twenty minutes apart. When the horse at the front of the line has been walking for two hours and consumed half of its bucket of water, the horse at the back of the line will run to catch up with the horse ahead of them, dump half of its bucket into the fourth horse’s bucket and the pattern will repeat (with the fourth horse running to catch up with the third horse to dump half of its bucket into the third horse’s bucket, the third horse running to catch up with the second horse to dump half of its water into the second horse’s bucket, and then the second horse running to dump half of its water into the first horse’s bucket – at which point, the lead horse will have a full bucket). The pattern will repeat until all of the horses have full buckets for the journey across the desert (with the last horse making a total of five hasty trips back to the creek). When the lead horse reaches the pool, they will refill their bucket and they will repeat the pattern in reverse – with the lead horse sprinting back to fill the second horse’s bucket, the second horse passing half of their bucket to the third, the third to the fourth, and the fourth to the last.
It seems as good a system as any to Bethlehem and he agrees to lead after a particularly spirited (and generous) horse volunteers to bring up the rear and make the five trips back to the creek.
Bethlehem sets out on his own, carrying his one bucket of water. After so many years of walking, he finds the terrain fairly easy to navigate. There are steep drops that he has to edge his way down, his steps careful as rocks chip and tumble down the rockface. There are yawning crevasses that he has to jump, which is a tall order with a ¾ full bucket in his mouth. There are burs and brambles and coyotes yipping in the distance. He is not especially afraid, but he knows better than to not pay the hazards of the canyon a healthy amount of respect.
He has been walking for nearly three hours by the time the second horse reaches him and fills his bucket. He flashes them an appreciative smile as he leaves them there to wait for their own refill. He knows that he has plenty of water now, that the only thing he has to weather are the obstacles that lie ahead. He moves quietly and past a pack of coyotes that are feasting on something near the trail, careful not to breathe.
He is forced to give pause to consider a line of fire cutting across the trail a little further up. He could jump this, too, but he would risk burning his legs should the fire spit or flare. He sets his bucket down before he hastily kicks dirt onto the flame in an attempt to smother it, granting himself passage and hopefully eliminating the obstacle for the other four members of his group altogether. It takes him several minutes to smother the flame, lost time he has to make up by trotting for several more miles than he’d originally planned to.
Eventually, what presents itself as the finish line looms into view and, as far as he knows, he has plenty of time to run a refill back to the second horse in line so that the remaining horses can work together to fill the last horse’s bucket and all make it back to the pool with time and water to spare. That is, if it is really the finish line at all. If not, they will all gather at the edge of the mirage and wait for Tir to transport them back. He’ll still have at least an hour’s worth of water for the wait.
(ooc: just made up a bunch of stuff for the sake of choosing trail five because trail one seemed too obvious lmao i truly did not understand the assignment at all god bless america)