"But... Elder Dimble, I want to be a wizard... I want to learn magic! I can do magic! The secrets of the world... Untold power, and all that..."
"No, Ari, it's out of the question. You're a Sparrerbarrer, yer daft eejit, not some high falutin elven gobshite! A good honest Gnome what does good honest work, tinkerin' and mining and weasel farming and suchlike, I can't be letting you go off and be a wizard... You have duties to your fellow Sparrerbarrers, and..."
"It's unfair! So unfair! Yer worse than yer uncle Beaglehopper, and you smell worse, an' all! I hate you!"
"Ari, you take that back you young periwinkle! You kiss my hand and you take that back!"
"Feck off, yer great gobshite, feck off! I'm not kissing your stinking hand! You can kiss my stinking arse!"
"Ari, you little shit, you come back 'ere! ARI! DON'T YOU SHOW YOUR FACE AROUND HERE AGAIN, YOU BADGERFONDLIN' ARSE!"
A distant door slammed, and Elder Dimble never set eyes upon Ari Fekweasle Sparrowbarrow Namfondle again. Ari had gone. Mumbler had gone. There was an elf nearby, they said, lived in a tree, learned in magic, like elves were wont to do, and wont to be, and Ari was going to make the elf show him the magic, show him how to make things be just by saying them, know everything, and all that. Then they'd be sorry.
He hadn't showed him, the daft buggar, that elf. He'd laughed. Said it was just twinkling lights, whistlin' magic, tricks for kids. Had no real innate gift, he reckoned. Pompous old gobshite. He was a gnome: he had hard feckin' graft. Honest effort. Toil. As Ari walked east, towards the distant city of Aretrian, he resisted the urge to look back. He'd heard in the old stories that he shouldn't. But he really wanted to. He really wanted to see that turgid old eejit burn. Living in a tree. Gobshite. Nowt wrong with a proper honest hole. That'd showed him.
It weren't like what he thought though, the big city. Ari'd turned up one morning on the steps of one of the private colleges what teach magic, looking a bit raggedy, looking rightly like he barely had a gold piece left in his pockets. Called him a feckin' midget, they did, a tramp, not from round 'ere, didn't he know? Costs, becoming a wizard, it does. Need to know the right stuff. Need to be born right. Even if he didn't need much of it, they had no place for feckin' midgets, they said. No room. Bastards. He broke in that night and burned down the shitting gatewarden's hovel as the fecker slept in it. He fecked right off, didn't look back, imagined the eejit burning. Knocked the next day on the door at the city guard, said he'd come into town that morning and already heard they was looking for work. Handy with a bow he was, our Ari. Split an arrer with an arrer at fifty paces. Small. Quiet. Could get about places them big folks couldn't always. Killed a kobold before, too. Knee on his windpipe, watching the little gobshite stop living. Plus he could make lights pop out of his fingers like. Nifty, under the ground..
edit: I've got 55 GP spare. It could go towards a 10th of a Wand of CLW if anyone wants to contribute, or if anyone needs anything in particular, or can suggest something under about 1lb I could buy...