After burying her children, she had prayed to die, but the Universe had other plans for her. You could see her on the road to the cemetery, like a phantom, her face an almost blinding white under a black embroidered shawl, withering everything behind her. People would tell stories that anyone who accidentally touched her would freeze their blood in their veins. One person claimed to have seen her crying on the lakeshore, and it had turned to ice. Today, she scratched the earth beside the crosses at -10 degrees, howling like a she-wolf. When she rose, snowdrops grew from under her fingernails. I have seen it.
(Translated by Beatrice-Ioana Huruială / 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. 
