Macavei, what's on your mind? You've been sitting on the porch for two days with a pipe in your mouth. You didn't even touch the food. I think, Ioana, of the curse that the one above brought down on me. There, I close my eyes to see your face, I ache until sunset to ease the pain and I found no spring water to quench the longing for you. When the sheep start to take the winding path that leads to the village, I would fly into your arms. But as soon as I lie down next to you, I miss my brother, the mountain. Macavei, I do not curse the fate of the shepherd.
(Translated by Alin-Marian Mărgescu / 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. 
