Unexpected

Opal

"Go away!" Laura yelled waving her hands around in the air. If her parents saw the horse she would have to explain and get perhaps the biggest row of her live! But the horse just stood there staring at her as if she was the most amusing thing in the world.
"Get out of here," she pleaded desperately. The horse swished its shimmering white tail and began pacing about in front of her. Laura sighed she didn't know what on earth she was going to do. Just then she heard a sound from behind that pulled her from her thoughts. Her mum. She was going to see horse. Laura did the only thing she could: run. To her relief the horse trotted after her towards the forest beside her house.

Once she was hidden from sight Laura sat down to get her breath back. There, she watched as the shimmering white horse bend down its head and nudged her gently on the shoulder. A smile crept on to her lips as she clapped its silky neck.

An idea sprung to her mind: she could just let the horse stay there and come to see it in secret. And that was exactly what she did. Every day after school she would sneak out to see the horse, who seemed to be quiet content with this arrangement. She'd finally stopped begging her parents to keep the horse.

"You'll need a name," she said to the horse one day after school. After thinking for a minuet she said, "silver, no that's rubbish," she said in frustration as something pinged into her mind.
"Opal," she whispered. "What about that? Opal. That suits you." The horse was too busy getting his mane scratched to notice.

Laura sat beside opal thinking. She couldn't bare to go back to her house. Her mum had just lost her job so her parents were always deep in conversation that she couldn't be involved in. Laura was dying to take part in a big horse riding race that was taking place in a few months. There were flyers up all over about it. Laura had been going over something in her head for a long time. She'd always wanted to have her own horse and she knew how to train one. The answer was simple: to train Opal. It would be perfect. The prize could go towards helping her family out until her mum got a new job.