Entry for 's Contrast contest.

"Nil desperandum" Horace

The rain fell down, pouring from the temptestous dance of the dark clouds. All was grey and drab in that vast expanse of water, disturbed only the the ripples caused by the raindrops slicing diagonally through the muggy atmosophere, sop thick and humid that it was hard to tell it from the water in which the dark horse stood, head down, but not as a means of sheltering against the tmepest, but to talk to the small swift form of the jewelled hummingbird that hovered in front of his muzzle.

"I tried," whispered the horse dully.
"Sol." The hummingbird flitted up a little, to gaze into one of the horse's abyss-like eyes: deep and black, filled with fathoms of despair and doomed hope.
"I tired so hard," continued the hrose, deaf to the hummingbird's attemtps at kindness. "I tried to live a good life. I tried to save them. I did everything I was supposed to do, and for what?"
"It's not your fault," the hummingbird said: a weak sentence that left comfort hanging, slipping, falling away.
"It IS my fault, Balthasar. That's jsut it, it was always my fault."
"Shut up!" snapped the hummingbird, suddenly aggressive. "Who are you to stand here, wallowing in pity and despair?"
"I'm just so tired of fighting and struggling," sighed the stallion. He scraped a hoof against an itch on his forehead, exposing some bright gold fur that lay hidden beneath the mucky and dust that now covered his fur.
"Soledad, Soledad," Balthasar managed to say at last. "Do not despir. You tried to end it, and your family, your friends, they know that you did all you could. At least you made up with them, apologised for your actions, and you tired to protect them. Do not let this despair drag you down."
Soledad shook his head, his straggly wet mane flopping with the movement of his once muscular neck. "What is left apart from despair?"
"Hope, Soledad, HOPE!" exclaimed Balthasar. All at once, the slashing, slicing rain took on a new gentler note, falling to the surface of the swampy water in an almsot melodic beat.
"Look!" Balthasar whsipered. Soledad raised his head tiredly, squinting at the sky. It wa changing, the dull and dark iron barricade of the storm beginning to break. Bright beams of light forced their way through the clouds. Little by little the sky grew lighter, a pallid shade of grey dappled with white like the flanks of the albino deer that he had so often crossed paths with in the forest, until at last the gloom seemed to retreat from the towering white clouds.
As Soledad and Balthasar looked on, the clouds seemed to form familiar shapes, shapes with rounded muzzles and thick flowing manes: horses in the sky, familair faces of friends and family.
"Come along, come along!" The rain seemd to reverbate their message, a melody that set raindrops shaking and spinning. "We are going to the sea, to Evermore and After!"
Soledad breathed deeply, the clean smell of the storm filling his lungs. More and more figures seemed to fill the clouds, firends and enemies alike: white deer running, the dark stallions of the plain, his childhood playmates, bucking nad squealing as they went, even the strange coloured wolf and the odd long form of the shaman.
"Come along, come laong, to the sea, to the sea!"
"I've never seen the ocean," Soledad mused.
"One last journey?" Balthasar asked hopefully.
"Yes." And the lonely stalliopn shrugged off his bonds, the bonds of despair and sorrow that had tethered him for so long, and even some of his age seemed to fall from him as he cantered through the murky water, followed by the jewel breated hummingbird, lead by the ehtereal clouds that contantly changed form as they glided.

The contrast I tried to show was between:
Despair and Hope
Life and death
Sky and water
Big and small
Motion and stillness
Dark and light
Body and spirit

Mosto f these horses were referenced from a book of Gabrielle Boiselle's horses, however I have changed the collours and sometimes the features of the horses.