The sun was scorching, and their soles covered in sand. Bedouins ran around them on wild horses that seemed like drawings in the wind. The women joined hands and danced in a circle, the desert swallowed by their white dresses. May you have peace, their voices said like a prayer, at first. Then, like a cry from a shared soul. That of a mother who has seen her son leave, but never return. The soul of the mother who burns like a candle. May you have peace from a mother's mouth through the desert, until you reach the sea. May you have peace, from one to another.
(Translated by Diana Mîndruță-Tănăsescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 April 2022, the group has 8,175 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. 
