The old man walks slowly up the stairs with her in his arms. She's lighter every day, becoming bony, and herhoney-blond hair waving in the air. Upstairs, it smells like the stillness of old pictures. He leaves her in the rocking chair and opens the skylight: now we wait for the stars. A swallow appeared, it bumped against the roof and fell. He picked it up and released it into the sky. In his palm remained the flutter, a child's heart chasing butterflies. Speaking of which, where's the net? I know what you're saying, he turned to the empty rocking chair. It's night. I'll catch some fireflies for you.
(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / 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 June 2022, the group has 8,500 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. 
