She had the most beautiful yard in all of Vama Veche. She had tied ropes from the shed to the apple tree in the middle of the yard and she had hung on them straw umbrellas. Nobody made umbrellas like she did. She would gather the most beautiful straws, she smoothed the wood for hours on end, she tied them tightly with rough rope. After she finished them, she would bless them, to bring happiness to the tourists who would buy them. She had made umbrellas until the end although no one wanted them anymore. One day before she was gone, she left them on the beach for anyone to take them. The garbage truck collected them to make room for canopies.
(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. 
