Manole lowered his dark gaze from the scaffolding to Ana, who descended as well brightly towards the monastery walls. It's not ready, she thought. Poor things, how much more struggle they go through. My life is over, he thought. It could have been any other woman, but her care brought her to me first with goods. The legend says that the monastery wall is built on the sacrifice of love, by building Ana inside of it. But the sequel? What about Manole? Well, Manole turned into a tree and sat in the alley right in front of Ana, waiting for the day after to see her again.
(Translated by Andreea-Daniela Vasilache / 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. 
