Tea

Monica Aldea
As soon as spring makes its first appearance, you can hear the twins' voices from the garden of the house on the hill. Grandma, starting today we'll have our tea in the garden. Tina meticulously sets the blue china cups, Clara brings the little chairs and pushes the coffee table into the sunlight. The woman is startled by the auctioneer's voice and decisively raises her hand. The Delft tea service, the most expensive piece in our collection, going once, going twice, sold. In the nursing home's garden, Tina is the only one still sipping from the cup of memories.

Ionuț Morariu
The whirlpools in the boiling water attracted his gaze. He no longer cared that he was wasting precious time. The second he set foot into the hut where the ceremony was being held, it was as though he instantly took off an old coat. He had done his duty. The emperor's message had been delivered, and the old general could only obey. Or die. But who would ever pick death over life? A fish caught in the net of his thoughts, he heard, as if in a dream, the words carried by the steam of the tea. Why would I trade my Sabine fields for a living suffocated by fears?

Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She had the tea in her thermal bottle. He brought the tea cups. They sat on the little kindergarten chairs and traded toys. She came with the tea in her thermal bottle. He came with the tea cups. They sat together at the same desk in high school, studying for life's exam. She made the tea. He had bought the cups. They sat together in the same dorm room and gazed at each other through the steam. She boiled the water. And poured it into the cup. He filled himself a cup. In different corners of the world, in the fresh green scent, each of them sinks into his own armchair, reading the same book about two people in love. With tea.

(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.