I found her on a blanket in the garden under a walnut tree. She was talking to some wood pieces, neatly arranged in the grass. This big one is an elephant without a trunk,' she told me, 'this tree bark, a crocodile without eyes, and this piece of wood is a tiger without teeth. I asked her if I could play with it. Only if you bring me some fruit. I ran into the house and got five boiled potatoes from a bowl. Look - I told her - these are peel-less kiwis. After twenty years, in the village lost to the world, potatoes are still our favourite fruit.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / 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 June 2023, the group has 11,430 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. 
