The Star without a Name

Titela Durnea
I first met her in the summer of '75, at Corso. She shone, exuding sensuality and refinement from every pore. The indispensable fine, gold-plated tobacco case, the cigarette, the playful smoke that drew arabesques in the air-all were an extension of her forms. They swirled around her like butterflies in the light. For a few years, I watched her obsessively, summer after summer. The brilliance had subtly wrapped itself in the cloak of dusk. After '89, she no longer came. When I tried to track her down, I realized I didn't even know her name. I left a bouquet of lilies on the table for her.

Monica Aldea
Prâslea[1] had grown up watching over the stars. She kept an inventory in a ledger. He meant business when it came to the celestial vault. With the apples, things weren't going well anymore; the price of gold had dropped. The emperor also harvested medicinal herbs. They thrived, and the subjects were satisfied. Only the survivors. Chewing a blade of the Forbidden Grass, a strain developed from the crossbreeding with Beast Grass, the young man fell into a deep sleep. Honestly, they were all there; none stirred. But what's that glimmer in the bag? This? It's fake, Your Majesty. It's also written in the register-Star Without a Name.
Ana Maria Dobre-Nir
Look, there, behind that shining star, there is where I hid my desires. Today, I bite into them from behind the shadows. There is only a taste of smoke in my mouth. I could leave, get on a plane, and go far away, but I wouldn't solve anything. So I stay here with you, on this wet sand. I allow you to tell me how your day is going, what brings you joy or makes you upset, and so much more. However, I still feel my soaring pulling at my skin. Calling me to corners of the world of which I still know nothing.

(Translated by Bogdan Macarie / 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 2024, the group has 13,230 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, Monica Aldea, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.