The gentle sun blesses the field with poppies. There's a big fair in the village. The road is as slippery as hidden thoughts are. He told me that if I sold my dreams I'd get the potion to ease my father's suffering. My full satchel is making my knees grow weak, but I won't relent. The wood's branches carry me through the night. I'm the first to reach the village. No sooner had I unpacked the sack, than a few customers came and took it all. Silver coins burn my palms. Icing to the moon and I hop over three hills. A candle burns, next to my father's frozen tear.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Batog / 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. 
