It took me by surprise. She was three and a half and I expected her to ask me that in a year or two, not then. Mom, how are babies made? Uh, look, every woman has two bags of seeds in her belly. Like sunflowers? Yeah, I mean, just like that. And those seeds grow flowers? No, they grow babies. Oh. I breathe a sigh of relief, convinced I've cleared up the matter for now. But does dad have bags of seeds too? Yes, he does too, I reply, barely keeping myself from snorting with laughter. Got it, she says. Mothers make little girls and fathers make little boys.
(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / 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. 
