Character Sketch Contest Honorable Mention

Contest Description | Winners | Honorable Mention | Judges | Guidelines & Rules

At 86, Fiona P. Waxwing stands at a height that is shorter than tall, but taller than short. She has long, slender fingers, crinkly, tissue paper eyes, and several small, but not at all repulsive chin hairs. She lives in a skinny house made of pink bricks that has gray doves and two red chimneys on the roof. She has a vigorous approach to life, and prides herself in doing fifty push-ups every morning before breakfast. She is quite fond of overstuffed armchairs, and delights in simple pleasures, such as the sound of a spoon clinking in a ceramic dish. She also likes the sound of the word "davenport", although she's not quite sure what a davenport is. She, however, detests people who stiffly adhere to "proper etiquette", and would never fall short of smacking the arrogant nitwits upside the head with her umbrella. She is a firm believer that refined politeness' sole purpose is to be irritating. Fiona Waxwing can be quite quarrelsome, mainly because she loves a good argument. She likes to think she always takes the most logical standpoint in disputes, yet she continually seems to side with the absurd. Although her eccentric beliefs are nothing short of completely illogical, she is so insistent that she always wins. When her husband, Bernard, was still alive, she used to spend her time thumping around the house, giving him instructions on how he should be living his life. She was a firm believer that vitamin supplements were the key to longevity, and would force about twenty-seven different vitamin pills on him every morning, while rapping one wiry finger on the kitchen table and ordering him to swallow them down. Bernard, however, not keen on this proposition, would casually slip the supplements into the dirt of the small, slightly shriveled potted plant that sat on the kitchen table, so as his wife would not notice. However, after enduring daily dosages of vitamins A through K, the once small plant began to grow. The plant grew so big that it had to be put in a bigger pot. Then it grew bigger than the table itself. Eventually, Fiona's once small potted plant grew to a colossal size. When Bernard died from what Fiona decided was a lack of Thiamine and Riboflavin, Fiona could not bear to dispose of the enormous plant, despite its unprecedented size. So Fiona P. Waxwing, who had always had a love for glass, built an enormous greenhouse to accommodate it. Time passed, and strangely, the enormous plant seemed to attract the neighborhood birds. Eventually, birds from all over the world were rumored to have flocked to Fiona Waxwing's enormous glass house to roost. Sparrows, seagulls, parrots, even the long lost dodo, were seen wandering throughout the neighborhood, all ending up at the skinny house with the peculiar glass dome behind it. So now Fiona sits alone in her towering greenhouse, playing music to her plant and watching her lovely birds, and she is not at all lonely.