His days were as dark as a headscarf gathering tears from eyes that had wept for weeks. However, his nights were vibrant. He would plunge into the waters of the lake, frolicking like a fish. The moon would shed its golden sheen over the water, and he would gather it, his slender body darting to where it shone the brightest. He kept hiding for a while, because his skin sparkled like the dawn. All the while, the villagers marvelled at how the moon no longer reflected in the water. They attributed it to the upcoming autumn. It was then when the rumours about the golden-scaled lake monster began to circulate.
(Translated by Lucia-Alexandra Brînaru-Mitrofan / 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. 
