For two days she was left to dry in the sun and for two nights the waves swayed her until they found her on the beach. And still her cheeks were slightly flushed, and they crossed themselves wide and whispered that not long ago God had taken her into his kingdom. A day later she awoke and shuddered, warming herself top to toe as the priest sang her burial song. A miracle, cried the villagers, and again they made prayer crosses. But what if he wasn't imaginary, his mother wondered under her drooping eyelids. And he hoped, for the first time.
(Translated by Cosmina-Florentina Ciobanu / 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 March 2023, the group has 10,790 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
