I met Fernando Pessoa on the yellowed streets of Lisbon. The autumn stole his hat, as it would happen with a too ripped leaf. It fell, but what is it that fall if not the very action of falling? he was telling, watching me the same way people would watch other people. He called me next to him and we sat on a rock. The stillness that comes before death was felt in the air. That was what I was thinking about, but Pessoa wasn't thinking at all. He was only admiring the autumn's effort and the way all of the things that belonged to us were stolen.
(Translated by Diana-Maria Croitoru / 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. 
