101-Word Fiction Contest: Finalist

Boulder Weekly hosted its eighth annual 101-Word Fiction Contest in the summer of 2022. Out of nearly 100 reader-submitted entries, the following was ranked a finalist:

Four Winds
by Kate Jonuska

The spirits traveled as dust devils, bodies dissolved into grains fine enough to mix with sand. The four met among the monuments: a man clad in black leather from the north; a woman from the east draped in white cotton and strands of shell beads; a boy in turquoise swim trunks with turquoise eyes from the south; and a girl in a sundress from the west, shaking sand from her yellow hair. Joining hands, the spirits became one whirlwind of four colors as they danced the dunes into new shapes and polished the rock monuments they’d danced into existence eons before.