Here you can whisper. Do not shout because 1) you are not allowed and 2) nobody hears you. If you fail, do not feel embarrassed. On this sea, ships rarely get to the destination. A grey seacoast, nights without Moon and many cliffs. At least you have the map at hand. Now you know where you will not arrive. You are a small dot on this blue, on this enormous sea. Shake the sand off your thoughts and look temporarily for a shelter. If it is not true that the sky splits, a hand will emerge from clouds and take you. If it has good eyes. And if you have the chance.
(Translated by Teodora Stoian / 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 November 2021, the group has 7.500 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. 
