Delicate

Titela Durnea
I live in a world where I am loved. In a way I am the kind of thing who brings people hope. I show up in places you'd expect it the least, when your senses are lethargic. I enjoy having doors opened for me. Whenever I'm thirsty, I get the water of life. But I'm even happier when I'm being admired from afar. Solitude doesn't scare me. Nor does the cold. They think me gentle and frail. Little do they know I can carry the whole burden of winter underneath my white corolla. It's like living. The strongest of men are those who keep silent, drowning out the noise.

Gheorghiță Mircea
Having been born so frail, she took me to the edge of the cliff, but, exhausted by the birth, the new mom looked at me, I smiled at her, she smiled back and threw herself over. A vulture carried me in its claws to feed me to its babies. I smiled at them and they covered me with the fluff on their wings so I wouldn't freeze. We grew up together. My brothers learned to fly. I was frail and scared. They dropped me above the sea, encouraged me to flutter my arms. I fell amongst the sharks. I smiled at them and, with their hundred teeth, they smiled back. They raised me and, when I reached the shore, I was a man.

Arthur Ianoși
They swore at me, cursing everything they could find: the dead, the wounded, the blood, the family, they accused me of treason, they blamed me for my freedom not to choose and I stood there, amazed, and listened to each of them separately, trying to understand them like a good father who doesn't disown his children even if they make mistakes. And then they hit me. But I don't mean their words which were only the result of frustration, and not the hostile attitude born from helplessness either, the knowledge I had acquired in time hit me. From the little cornered thing, I became great and wise. I realised just how little they actually were so I helped them grow.

(Translated by Diana Gabriela Radu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 January 2025, the group has 13,600 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.