Help me, I pray thee. I cannot keep any man by my side. I need a potion that only you can make. The witch looked at her askew, the wart on her nose quivering. She opened the door of the storeroom, took out some peculiar, well ripened vegetables, laid the fire under the pot and got down to work. Girl, I'll cook you a stew so you won't know which man to choose. In the evening, the hut was filled with a fantastic smell. The old hag kept mixing with a large spoon while the girl marveled. What sort of potion is this, mother? Spicy mashed vegetables, muttered the hag.
(Translated by Alexandra Lica / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 September 2021, the group has 7.150 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 Ficțiuni Reale. 
