What are you doing here, came a voice as if from nowhere. I'm afraid to fly, said I, showing her my calcified wings. Then she jumped right into me and started questioning each and every single one of my doubts. Where are you, why did you hide in the loins, she'd hum repeatedly until I'd start trembling. And she kept on looking in me, until all that was hidden came to light, became free and gave myself back to me. I was, indeed, lighter, but I would no longer fly. To the Creature's astonishment, I learned to walk into the deep without drowning anymore.
(Translated by Ana Stănilă / 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 October 2021, the group has 7.275 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. 
