The traffic in the area had become more and more heavy and loud. It tired her terribly. From where Lizi stood now, the sky was barely visible through all kinds of objects, hats, spindles and fluffy things. Mother had taught her to always find their shelter - stay under umbrellas, she would say. Mother was long gone. It seemed as if by every passing day, Lizi grew older and she was less and less able to move. She hoped that the stories about the afterlife were true, those in which you grow coloured wings and you can fly, because this caterpillar life had been a bit sad.
(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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 May 2023, the group has 11,260 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. 
