A stiff edge of Siberia. Bluish night, warmed from place to place by orange rays falling to the ground from the top of the pillars. The wind sounded piercingly.
The people were bundled up with clothes, they looked like furry spheres. What seemed like a woman, she clung to what it seemed to be her boy. The voices cracked from the frost until they reached the ears, but a few words broke through:
I'm leaving, Mom. I'm not who my father wants to. I can't stay. I was born here, but I'm not here. It's just snow and cold. Don't cry. I'll write to you as soon as I get to Alaska.
(Translated by Mihaela Ţarida / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
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 Ficţiuni Reale. 
