I'm going, Ilie told his wife. My heart is numb and I miss the forest. I don't want to take root, I want to roam. Let the trees be my home. I will look for the outlaws and accompany them. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm not asking you to wait for me. You can find a good man. I'm not good enough, woman. If I stay in this village, in this house and in this bed, grief will overtake me and I will not sleep. I'd better go than stay. Leave, Ilie. But I will curse you. Dream of me. And see me among the trees.
(Translated by Carla-Marina Ștefănescu / 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. 
