Drizzle

Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
She grabbed her bike and headed towards the lake. She had barely reached the corner of the street when it began to rain. This is how it is around here, she thought. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's sunny. Did I lock the door? She turned around and checked. It was locked. But the stove? Everything was fine. She put on her yellow poncho. The blue one would suit me better. He told me I looked good in blue. He's so attentive and compliments me. The least I could do is wear his favourite colour. Okay, I look good. But what if it wasn't a compliment? Oh, and this weather, so unpredictable. What was I thinking?

Oana Jindiceanu
In this weather, I'm reading Minulescu's poems aloud and I'm daydreaming about warm summer evenings and walking through the city holding hands. The scent of linden trees melts our souls, flowing and meeting between our palms. They blend in a dance and we can no longer tell them apart. We're walking like this, with our souls intertwined until the sunrise. I'm resting my head on your chest, there, in the hollow between the shoulder and the heart, where I fit perfectly. I close my eyes. It's raining monotonously, pointlessly, absently, deceptively.

Iulia Biro
She's dashing down the road, unsure of how long she's been running. The drizzling rain is streaming down her hair, cascading onto her face and soaking her green T-shirt with dark, saturated spots where it's drenched. From the frayed hem, the water drips further onto her thin, pale, ceaselessly moving legs, stepping aimlessly with bare feet. If only they could get somewhere. The air smells fresh, like herbs that have been soaking for days. For the first time in years, she hopes she made her escape. The fear of this being merely a dream terrifies her, and yet, she might have drifted off while waiting for him to fall asleep.

(Translated by Oana Ionescu / 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 August 2023, the group has 11,680 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.