Andromeda and I are more beautiful than the Nereids, the sea nymphs, said Cassiopeia proudly. Hearing that, Poseidon angrily struck the rock with his trident. Huge waves rose from the sea, and Cetus, the wild monster that lay beneath the waters, looked menacingly at the land of Joppa. Only Perseus' love and the death-bringing gaze of Medusa saved the beautiful Andromeda from the jaws of the terrible Cetus. From above, Cassiopeia, turned by Poseidon into five stars scattered across the night sky, was weeping helplessly.
(Translated by Andreea Teodorescu-Colciu / 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. 
