Alina is dreaming. A little smile warms her baby face, bathed in soft light and the time seems to have stopped only to look at her. It's quiet, it's the time when her parents are fast asleep, but her bed is empty and the window is left open. Silent, the clock pendulum in the hallway hangs in an unnatural ballet. Alina is dreaming. She breathes quietly and constellations are dancing behind her closed eyes. A white ray envelops her like a caress, reading eons of information hidden in her small body. A century. A minute. A dream. Alina is dreaming.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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 February 2023, the group has 10,500 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. 
