He was cuddling, voice low, touching her tenderly between her little antennae. She let herself be petted, slightly blushing and, for a moment, forgetting of the fierce thirst that was ravaging her. They had been living for a lifetime under the same leaf, but they were rarely seeing each other since, in their world, distances were huge, and time wasn't the slightest bit more lenient. Every fulfilled ambition took them years of life and love. Because only love teaches us the meaning of patience. Her wet body hugged his shell, and she idly intertwined her little antennae with his. Out of love. Did you buy orange juice?
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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. 
