Dusk enveloped her with a cobalt sky, concealing the stream of tears. Ilinca's little hand squeezed her so tight despite its frailty, that it made her chest tremble. A river of fire gushed from her heart, melting around flesh and bones and skin, flowing onto the sand that guided their steps. Mummy, where are we going? At a castle, my princess. With fairies and fireflies and lots of sunshine. The child clung to her teddy bear, rushing her steps, happiness shining in her eyes. Behind them, the monstrous blows of palms that had once comforted stared red.
(Translated by Oana-Roxana Dicilea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
