The round afternoon expands in the air, sighing under the wings of eagles. Down, the desert was undulating its sand like a coveted woman's thighs. A bird's cry rarely broke the silence, taking a bite out of the herons killed by drought. Since the tribe took her prisoner, she has lost track of time. She meticulously pulled out one strand of hair each day and hid it next to her heart, counting the days each night. Today is the elders' Council. They've already decided: before killing her, they will set her free. It was the 256
th day.
(Translated by Diana Pașcanu / 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. 
