That evening, if somepony had managed to sneak into the Ponyville schoolhouse, they would have seen a pink cherry earth-pony, a pen in her mouth, and her eyes focused on a stack of paper. They would have watched her smile with the same smile at every sheet, no matter the letter she would wrote on the top right corner. They would have seen how the twilight was underlying the first wrinkles of a life dedicated to care about others. But nopony was there, as the bell had rung for hours, and every foal and filly had long come back home. 

What was the purpose of staying if the class was over?

They would have also heard a sigh as Cheerilee, the only one but still favorite schoolteacher nonetheless, put the stack of papers inside her saddlebags before leaving the school, humming a melancholic tune to herself. A music lover would recognise a famous pavan, in which a stallion glorified his love for a noble mare who had taken his life.

What would not be recognizable as a part of the song was the quiet but audible sniffs that were coming from the river. Because Cheerilee was a mare of care, she followed the sound, and, soon enough, she found that one of her student hadn’t come home like the others.

“Good evening, Snails,” she said while sitting next to him.

“Hi Mrs Cheerilee,” he replied without turning his head. His eyes were locked on his fishing rod. 

“I didn’t know you fished,” she said.

“I don’t,” said Snails, his eyes still on his fishing rod. “I don’t like that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“That’s because of the rod you say that, right?”

“Well, that’s kind of a big clue. With the rod, we could think you are indeed fishing.”

“No, no, that’s only a rod with a string. And a pebble at the end, to stretch the string.”

“Because it’s important that the string is stretched?”

“Yes of course, or else it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Right, of course…”

Silence came, but Cheerilee knew it wouldn’t last, not with Snails.

“I don’t know how to explain,” said the young pony, “but it calms me… Some ponies sing, others trot. I do that… At least, I don’t hurt anypony.”

“No, not even the fishes.”

“Sometimes I think about them, and I wonder if they are a bit perturbed by all this or not… Maybe they don’t take it well, that a pony tries to bait them with a pebble… They must say ‘He really thinks we are stupid’... Whatever they think, I don’t really care. I don’t come for them.”

“Why do you come here then, Snails?” The foal shrugged. “You don’t know?”

“Well, I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

Knowing her student, Cheerilee simply waited for her student to carry on.

“You see,” he said, “it’s kinda to do like adults, like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yes. I’ve always seen grown ponies, staring at the horizon before figuring out stuff, and I thought that I should try too. Figuring out stuff, I mean.”

“And what do you want to figure out?”

“I don’t really know; a lot of things I guess. I’m retarded so there are a lot of things I don’t get… The fishing rod helps me. I imagine the pebble in the water, and I feel like I belong to a whole: me, the pebble, the rod, the river, the sky… It forms something big, something coherent… It makes sense.”

“It makes sense, unlike Grasshopper.” Her student finally turned his head. Cheerilee had never seen him so lost. “I don’t understand Mrs Cheerilee, when I found him in the garden, my parents told me we would be best friends forever, like with Snips. But one day, they told me he left for a better world. And I don’t understand, what can be better than being with your best friend? Will Snips leave me too?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted reluctantly. “I don’t know.”

That evening, if somepony had walked by the river, they would have seen the schoolteacher and a young unicorn, each one holding a fishing rod in their hoof. They would have noticed how peaceful they seemed to be, only exchanging a word from time to time. But nopony walked this path this late, and it’s only when the Sun had disappeared that the two fisherponies came home, with only the beginning of an answer. And they didn’t need much more.