She smelled of seaweed and had skin that seemed to have never been touched by the sun. We looked at each other knowing what was to come, and we thought, each in his own language, words that would excite us. Her lips were red with lipstick, like dry blood. We didn't remember each other's names. We smiled at each other often, I became a tiger, she became a dragon. While the tea was brewing, we recognized ourselves in the other's skin, because we had grown scales like knife blades. We both had the courage and we didn't hurt each other, we took care of each other.
(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. 
