After they travelled far and wide, they met again at the old inn. Well, how was it? That was a close one, said the old man with grey eyes. The China man's wax came to life one day, but the creature slipped between my fingers. Did you have better luck than me? No, laughed the other old man with the flaming beard. My clay is still silent, but look. His expression changed, and the old man moved his magician's fingers. His shadows clouded the wall. Imagine that all the powders and potions that we've gathered will someday make the shadows dance in the light.
(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 November 2022, the group has 9,580 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. 
