Urist the Ugly

Once upon a time there was a wee little dwarf named Urist who the sorriest excuse for a dwarf that there ever was. She was born with naught but tiny twigs for legs and they did not grow even one bit even as she aged. Because of this, Urist could never walk, and needed to drag herself across the jagged craggy stone of her dead-broke family's measly cavern home; because of this, her body frail little body was always scraped and bruised, and her muscular fingers were always scarred and often bloody. To make matters worse, even as Urist developed into a young lass, she never learned to speak a word, and her bottom jaw would just flap hopelessly about, dripping streaks of drool whenever she tried. Most dwarves simply considered her a lost cause, and the only companion she had were the stray granite stones she would collect around her shantytown, gathering them up in her unusually robust fingernails and whisking them away into her room whenever she got the chance. Nobody bothered to ask why she was always collecting rocks, they always just figured that she may have found in them kin due to their matching conversational skills.

As lost a cause as she was, Urist's poor parents still loved her as family should, and that love was enough for them to hold onto that minuscule sliver of hope that she might grow up to be a person of value someday, and so they tightened their already boa-constricting belts in order to scrounge together what meager scraps they could to send her off to trade school. Some laughed at them for their foolishness while others wept from how sorry a sight it was, and if not for their neighbors sparing them some leftovers, they would have surely succumbed to starvation, but still, her parents felt pride as they sent young Urist off to her first day of school.

At first, Urist's mentors did not know what to make of her as she crawled in through their front door clad in torn rags, babbling incoherently, and leaving a snail trail of slobber across their polished marble floor, but nonetheless they gave her sculpting tools and a raw chunk of Citrine gemstone for her to carve in order to gather a rough idea about her skill-level. Urist picked up the steel chisel for but a moment in order to inspect it with a discerning eye, but then she turned and looked upon her own clawlike fingernails which were twice as thick and only a tad less sharp. Nodding, she gently set the chisel down again. Urist then picked up the gemstone in her hand and began to work quite literally tooth and nail as she carved it to shape. For hours she feverishly wrought away as if possessed until finally, she held the gem up high. She had worked it into a form that could only be described as the most ornate and tessellated bismuth crystal the world had ever seen. Her mentors were awestruck that the crystalline structure of the citrine could even be fashioned in such a way, and yet each and every cut appeared as smooth and as exquisite as the last. Her mentors asked Urist if they could see more of her work and the next day she brought in her collection of carved granite sculptures that she had kept hidden within the hay pile on which she slept. The designs of each and every piece were unique, unnatural, unworldly, unsettling, and so masterfully crafted that they could not help but celebrate her disturbed genius.

With the support of her mentors, Urist became a famed artist and raked in barrels full of silver. She may not have ever found a cure for her condition, but she did buy herself a fancy mechanized wheelchair and saved her family from miserable poverty, which is far better than anybody could have hoped of her. In the end, it just goes to show that no matter how pathetic you are, so long as you master one marketable skill, you will always be able to find your way in the world.