Have mercy on me and set me free, I cannot fulfill any wishes and I am not even that valuable for the market. If you release me, you'll catch real fish, not anchovies like me.
Those scales are pure gold, you cannot fool me, you flat fish.
Titi was about to squeeze the net, but he found himself pulled hard into the depths. The little fish was good friends with the enchanted one, so he gave everyone what they deserved.
Only the folding chair and the fishing rod were left behind. A cross would soon appear, as so many others did around the lake.
(Translated by Mădălina Mangalagiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Professor Nadina Vişan)
Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In January 2021, the group has 3.000 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
