Marius Stan
I've never been to Siberia, but Siberia has been inside me a few times. Each time it came with huge, brilliant white snowflakes. How nice, I thought, Siberia is nice. Only the wind slowly picked up. Then an unrelenting blizzard of frozen words, gestures and thoughts drove me back against the wall and my face into an uncertain future. I found myself in a vast, barren territory inhabited only by a few memories. But here came blades of grass and a purple tundra flower. Spring is coming.
Victoria Gârlan Grigore
A man tried to open the door of the wagon, but the snow held it like a fortress of ice. The air became heavier and heavier, steamy breaths drew shadows on the frosted windows. Someone tried to light a makeshift fire with pages torn from a magazine, but the flame died quickly, overcome by the cold. A woman pounded desperately on the window, but only the echo of the blizzard answered. In the distance, a faint flicker. The headlights of a rescue train. The train was trapped, but hope still flickered in the white inferno.
Marian Bircea
Colors arise from non-colors, white springing from light energy. We are children of the stars. Have you ever been struck by white light so intense that you sublimate instantly? I wished this year to fall in love, now my wish has come true, and it is not at all as I dreamed but much more frightening, blinded so badly that I see no color, but a dark white wasteland of nothing, dry, withered, odorless, impalpable, filled with the fear of love pushed too far that it becomes intangible.
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.