The weather was so frosty that the wood was softly crackling in the fireplace. She threw the parsley in the soup and went outside to sit on the porch, and get some air. Her body swayed under the weight of a longing so great that whatever spilled out she stuck in the pocket of her apron. She had the same routine. Once every three days she made soup, hoping for the return of the darling mouths she has to feed. She got letters from there, from the battlefield, but she didn't know how to read. She smelt them and mourned them silently. Keep them warm, dear God, and bring all three of them back when you see fit.
(Translated by Ioana Diana Sandu / 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 September 2022, the group has 9,250 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. 
