Your poor little legs, that's what the Emperor used to tell her. She was a klutz, grandpa told her. Like you. She was a princess that disliked life in the palace. She preferred to play barefoot in the garden. She would hide behind trees; she would sleep in the grass. She liked plants and animals more than humans. Maybe because they accepted her for who she was. Do you? Do you feel accepted by us? The little girl didn't answer. She was upset after fighting with her mother. She would have wanted to be what her mother asked her to be, but she wasn't. She would always dirty her clothes and break her sandals.
(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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. 
