I would sing the snail song until their little horns would appear from under their shells. I would follow the damp streak on the leather chair. From the cheap bag came the smell of elderflower. With my legs stinging from nettles, I used to ease the pain by eating May cherries bought by my father from the locals. Adorned with earrings made from cherries, I would play catch with the sun between my fingers. I would stuff another bag with linden flowers. Along the way, their scent took effect. There, at the edge of the Red Forest, the childhood, in
knee-high socks, is still gathering elderflower and ladybugs.
(Translated by Andreea-Simona Trufin / 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 May 2021, the group has 6.400 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
