Standing in the common hall of the great dwarven city, Clanholm, Ambulo put all thoughts of food and hunger from his mind, His hands moved absent mindlessly, and with glazed eyes he barely heard the slap of the knife handles hitting his palms as the blades moved in the familiar circular pattern of catch and release.
    When a child stopped to watch Ambulo’s juggling, he did his best to smile from beneath his matted beard, but he thought it might have looked more like a grimace. He made the knives twirled and dance in the air. The loud clang made when he forced one of the knives to bounce, pommel first, off the stone floor and back up into his routine caused several heads to turn in his direction only to quickly turn away.
    The young dwarf giggled and clapped. Like a forgotten memory from long ago, Ambulo’s heart soared at the sound.
    "Come away now," a stern voice ordered. "You should not wander off."
    Ambulo shifted his focus from the beardless child to a scowling elder striding in his direction. Potter clan signs woven into the elder’s massive beard glinted brightly with each step.
    "Yes Da," the child said softly. The sound of her dejection matched Ambulo’s own. With a frown, he snatched his knives out of the air as the elder walked up and took the child by the hand.
    "You know better than that," the elder scolded. Without looking at Ambulo he said, "Look at his beard, Jora. What do you not see?"
    The little kinsman looked up at Ambulo. "No clan signs," she sighed and hung her head. "He has no clan signs Da."
    The clanless were few, mostly the unintended offspring of illicit affairs, abandoned to Clanholm's single orphanarium. Since his mother died bringing him into this world, questions about his parents must go unanswered.
    "No clan, so no craft, and not much of a real beard either," the elder potter said with a scowl.
    He tried to grow a longer beard, but it interfered with juggling. Faced with eating or a beard, he chose eating.
     "I’m sorry Da," little Jora said gloomily and started to walk away with her father.
    As the two turned away, the potter made a quick move with his free hand and several coins fell in to the cloth hat at Ambulo’s feet. "For the show," he said quietly.  
    Ambulo resisted the urge to reach down and see how much the potter had given him. "Thank you," he whispered.
    The potter marched down the massive hall with his daughter in hand. Ambulo snatched up his hat. Two silvers and five copper! It was a fortune for an unseen dwarf like Ambulo and his stomach rumbled at the thought of eating.
    As he deposited the coins into a small cloth pouch that hung from his neck he noticed a young dwarf maiden walking near by. Ambulo could make out her coppersmith clan signs and he quickly set his hat back on the ground and tossed all three daggers back into the air on the hopes a member of the nobility would be even more generous than the potter. His knives flashed brightly in the glow of the day-lanterns as he weaved them from hand to hand. With a skill honed from years of practice, he effortlessly spun the knives on their points creating an illusion of them hovering in the air before seamlessly adding two more knives from the scabbards on his forearms.
    "Very nice!" she said with a grin. "I did not even see you add the extra knives. They just seem to appear, almost like magic!
    Ambulo blinked several times. His fellow dwarves almost never spoke to him, especially a member of the nobility.  "Thank you," he said timidly, unsure of what else to say to such a person. "With no craft other than juggling, I have lots of time to practice."
    "Every kinsman has a craft of some type," she replied. "We all create something. It is who we are."
    Ambulo made several more tosses before stopping. Setting the knives down next to his hat, he reached into his vest pocket. "Does music count?" he said timidly pulling out a small wooden flute.
    "A flute? So unkinsmanlike!" she said, again using the old Earthtongue name for their people. "Show me."
    Closing his eyes, Ambulo put the instrument to his lips. He’d never played in public before and really didn’t think much of his ability. Taking a deep breath, he put the flute to his lips and played a soft, simple song. Ambulo closed his eyes and focused his entire essence into the flute. The high-pitched notes bounced and echoed off the walls of the common hall creating an odd duet with himself. As his fingers moved to create the final notes, he opened his eyes to see several kinsmen actually looking in his direction with blank expressions instead of the usual scorn bestowed upon a clanless dwarf.
    After a long moment of silence, the noblewoman said. "Never have I heard anything so beautiful, so different. What an amazing craft! Did the gnomes teach you or did you travel beyond our halls and learn from the Phariefolk?"
    Ambulo opened his mouth to speak, but his mind went blank with her praise and the thoughts of music being a craft. It lacked the creation of anything tangible, the hallmark of kinsman life. Even the peasant farmer clans created something, even if it was only temporary.
    "After such a memorable performance, I want you to have this," she said. Taking his hand, she placed a large gold coin on his palm and closed his fingers around it. Ambulo’s heart thumped loudly in his chest at the sight of so much wealth.
    "I hope to hear you play again. Tomorrow perhaps?"
    Living day to day, Ambulo never thought beyond his next meal. Struggling to survive with no family, no long tradition of a tradeskill handed down father to son, mother to daughter. Clutching his flute tightly he watched her walk away, then he heard it. It was faint, but the tune he just played floated in the hall, whistled from somebody. He snapped his head around trying to determine the source. Then he heard it another, and then a third.
    He watched as the guardsmen lit the night-lanterns, all three whistling his music. He packed up his things and returned to the hovel he called home.
    The next day, Ambulo stood in almost the same place, his belly full. New clothes replaced the rags worn from the previous day. He scanned the common hall for the Coppersmith. He gaze rested on a kinsman walking toward him with toymaker clan signs in her beard. The toymaker did not look away, she nodded toward Ambulo and sat down on the bench near him.
    "Could you play the song from yesterday?"
    A miner clan member turned his head and looked in their direction. "Yes, I heard the guardsmen whistling something they claimed they heard from you. Can you play it again?"
    Ambulo stood there and realized he had created something, it may not be tangible like a sword or clay jar, but it endured beyond the moment of its existence.  With a smile, he put his flute to his lips and started to play.