She looked at her rough hands, in which the imperfections had dug deep. She had taken care of her elders until they perished. Of her husband, bedridden by some terrible affliction. Ofher children, now long gone to the big city. They had left to live like gentlemen, even though she had taught them that being a gentleman meant being born with dignity and humanity, not with furs and silver. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, slammed the chunk of polenta on the table muttering: give me a bit of honey for I've become so sour you'd think I'm old Safta's pickles.
(Translated by Medeea Alexandra Stan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 January 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
