When they were promising everlasting love under the tainted veil of a thousand stars, the wind was blowing of change. The grass was caressing their calloused feet, the rock became the guardian of thought's serenity. Down there, in the distance, the gurgling lava was consuming promises and crushing hopes on the sound of smouldering screams. I think we'll look funny, like flies caught in amber. When they dug them up, they seemed as though seized by Medusa, but their mouths, clenched in stone, would not open. Their eternity only lasted that long.
(Translated by Ioana Grigoruţă / 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 June 2021, the group has 6.650 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. 
