Waves hit rocks, barrels and crates adrift. Half a yellow moon. An oil lamp burns in the window where a woman waits. When on the shore torchesbecome alight, she unties her hair and enters the great hall. At the spread tables the guests are already feasting and showing off their bounty. The man at the head of the table takes her into his arms and kisses her passionately. How I've missed you, young lady, he says and clasps a string of three-star sapphires around her neck. She falls limp in his arms whilecat-eyed, she searches the crowd for the pale face with starryeyes.
(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / 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. 
