Y09W13RC Power and Relationships

The way we say something often matters as much as what we actually say — especially in situations where relationships and responsibilities are at stake. This story explores how language can shift the balance of power between people in an everyday group setting, and you will practise inferring subtext, analysing how specific word choices affect relationships, and tracing cause and effect through dialogue. As you read, pay close attention to what characters choose not to say, as much as what they do.

Literary — Realistic short story

A realistic short story is a brief fictional narrative set in a believable, everyday world — the kind of situation and characters a reader might plausibly encounter in real life. Writers use this form to explore human experience through a compressed, focused lens: rather than following a character over months or years, a short story zooms in on a single incident, conversation, or turning point that reveals something significant about people and relationships. The content typically includes dialogue, internal thought, and close observation of behaviour, all organised so that small details accumulate into meaning. Short stories often move through a single rising tension toward a moment of insight or shift, without necessarily resolving everything neatly. As a reader, your job is to read attentively for what is implied beneath the surface of the narrative — tracking how characters' feelings and the power between them develop through the specific words they use and the choices they make.

Before You Read

  • This story is told through dialogue and close third-person observation — as you read, pay attention not just to what characters say but to how the narration describes the moments between their words.
  • Think about how the same request — asking someone to do their share of a group task — can land very differently depending on the specific words chosen and the tone behind them, even when the core message is the same.
  • Notice the title before you begin and consider what it suggests about where the story's focus will lie — the word [power] alongside [words] signals that language itself will be the central subject, not just the events.

While You Read

  • Track how the balance between the characters shifts across the story — pay attention to the moments where that shift happens and the specific language that causes or marks it.
  • When you reach each line of dialogue, read it twice: once for its literal meaning, and once for what it implies about the speaker's position, confidence, or intention in that moment.
  • Notice what the narrator draws your attention to in the gaps between dialogue — pauses, gestures, and observations about a character's internal response are often where the most significant meaning is carried.
  • When a character chooses not to say something they could have said, treat that silence as deliberate — consider what it reveals about their understanding of the situation and the other people in it.

Read With Purpose

  • Notice how the story positions restraint — paying attention to the moments when a character holds back from saying more, and considering what those moments reveal about power in relationships.
  • Observe how the dynamic between the three characters shifts across the story — pay attention to whether those shifts are caused by what is said, by what is withheld, or by something else entirely.
  • Pay attention to the story's final image and consider what it suggests about how power and relationships can change quietly, without needing to be named or acknowledged out loud.

Now read

The short story

~4 min read · ~621 words

The Power in the Words

The group project had been Mia’s idea, and somehow that meant she had become the one doing most of it. It was Thursday afternoon, and the three of them — Mia, Declan, and Soraya — were supposed to be in the library finishing their section of the Year 9 science presentation. Declan had arrived twenty minutes late. Soraya hadn’t arrived at all.

“We’re almost out of time,” Mia said, keeping her voice steady. “The slide on water quality still needs three more data points and a graph.”

Declan looked up from his phone. “Soraya said she’d do that part.”

“Soraya isn’t here.”

“So text her.”

Mia had already texted her twice. She set her pen down carefully — a small gesture, but deliberate. “Declan, I need you to take the graph. I’ll do the data points.”

There was a pause. Declan put his phone face-down on the table, which Mia registered as a small victory. “That’s not really my job,” he said. “I did the introduction.”

“You wrote four sentences,” Mia said. It came out flatter than she intended, but she didn’t walk it back.

Declan’s jaw tightened. “I was going to add more.”

“We don’t have time for going to.” Mia slid the laptop across to him. “The template is already set up. You just need to paste in the figures and add the title.”

He looked at the screen for a moment, then at her. Something shifted — she could see it happen, though she couldn’t have named exactly what it was. The dynamic between them had changed: not dramatically, not with any shouting, just a small rebalancing of weight. He pulled the laptop toward him.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re writing up the notes after.”

“That was already my job,” Mia said. “Thank you.”

She meant the thank you. She also knew it did more work than it appeared to — it closed the door on the argument without slamming it, and it reminded both of them that the conversation had ended on her terms.

Soraya appeared at ten past four, flushed and apologetic. “The bus — there was an accident on Mitchell Street, everything was backed up.”

Mia looked at her. She could have said several things. She chose the simplest. “We covered your section. Can you check our working before we export?”

It was not an accusation. But it was not nothing, either. The instruction — can you check our working — gave Soraya a job while making clear that Soraya’s absence had created one. Soraya understood. She sat down without further explanation and opened the data tab.

The three of them worked in near-silence for the next twenty minutes. When they finished and saved the file, Declan stretched and said, almost to himself, “That actually came together.”

“It did,” Mia said.

She didn’t add: because I made it. That would have been gratuitous — unnecessary and a little cheap, the kind of remark that wins the moment but costs something harder to recover. She had learned, slowly and mostly through error, that restraint in those moments was its own form of power. Saying less than you could say was sometimes the stronger move.

Walking out of the library, Soraya fell into step beside her. “Sorry I was late. Really.”

“I know,” Mia said. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t entirely fine — the afternoon had been harder than it needed to be — but Mia had decided it was fine, which was close enough. That was a different kind of agency: not the ability to control what happened, but the ability to choose how much of it you carried forward.

Declan held the door open as they left. It was a small gesture. Mia noticed it without commenting. Some shifts didn’t need to be named to be real.

Check your vocabulary knowledge

dynamic n.
the way in which power or energy is distributed between people in a relationship
gratuitous adj.
unnecessary and serving no useful purpose; done for its own sake
restraint n.
the practice of holding back from saying or doing more than is needed
agency n.
the capacity to make deliberate choices and act on them in a situation
deliberate adj.
done consciously and intentionally, not by accident or impulse