It had been months since his footsteps had stirred the dust. When the shore came into view, he thanked the gods and strapped his axe to his belt. He clambered lofty up on deck, smiling into the sunset, his rough hair being tossed by the cold north breeze. The waves, becoming smaller and smaller, were caressing the rocky edges of the coast. He closed his eyes, dreaming of the promised spoils and feasts. Blood and glory. Hot mead and wet young girls. Valhalla. His reverie was interrupted by a voice from nowhere: The father of the little boy Ionuț is asked to come to Customer Service.
(Translated by Florina Șamata / 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 August 2022, the group has 9,000 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. 
