Now, here’s the thing about dwarves: they’re not like you and me. We wake up, we shower, we get dressed, we go to work, and while we’re doing all this, sometimes we get an idea. “I should write a cookbook that focuses on pomegranates,” we think, and then we get out of the shower and towel off and we don’t write the book. “I should create a mosaic depicting Washington’s terrible defeat at Fort Necessity,” we think, and then, almost always, we reach our bus stop, we step off the bus, and we go on with our lives.
Dwarves aren’t like that. They have lives, and jobs, just like us, and they have normal ideas that don’t come to pass, just like you and me, but sometimes – often enough that the Dwarves have five different words for it, all of which translate, roughly, to “touched” – a dwarf gets a particularly strong idea, an idea that he can’t shake. “I should write a cookbook that focuses on pomegranates,” the dwarf will think, “and I will make the cover from pomegranate peel. And the ink will be made from pomegranate juice, and the pages shall be made of the finest papyrus, and the pages will be bound with a single thread of gold. And the book shall be called ‘Berrydowned’.”
The dwarf’s co-workers might say to him “Hey, Arast, why did you stop hammering?” and Arast will say “Fuck you,” walk in to a grocery store, kick everyone out, and spend the next nine hours obsessively examining each pomegranate to find the perfect materials for his cookbook. That’s what dwarves are like. (more…)
