I wish I were beautiful, said the little white cygnet. As beautiful as a butterfly. The sky heard her. The star she wished upon fell right into her lap. Morning could see that she was black, the kind of black that shimmers in darkness. People from all over the world would come and take pictures of her, admire her, maybe even pinch a feather for good luck. The television was there, too. The swan was happy. One day, she began losing her sparkle. The star had grown weary and one day simply stopped shining. Everyone rushed out to see the Muscovy duck that had hatched two live ducklings.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 April 2023, the group has 11,000 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. 
