Key Items: The Lost Keys

Name: Marché (aka Atrus)

Species: human, sometimes wallaby

Age: 27

Hair: blond (gray fur in wallaby form)

Eyes: light green

"Keys, wallet, phone," the young man muttered. "Wallet, check. Phone, double check! Keys --" He frowned, patting at his shorts' pockets. "Crap! Where the heck are my keys?"

Sucking the inside of his cheeks, Marché looked around his small apartment. Small, he thought, but big enough to lose tiny objects in. Like his keys.

Quoting a childhood favorite movie, he whispered: "Here, key-key-key!" Marché was good at his job, reasonably well liked ...and a total scatterbrains.

Where did you have it last? asked his mom, in memory. "If I knew that, Ma, I'd also know the universal constant. Which I don't." He hardly realized he was speaking aloud. In passing, the mirror showed his boyish face, still dotted with freckles at age 27. Medium-length blond hair shaded his light green eyes, which often looked inward. And, as so often happened, he turned an ordinary search into a role-playing quest.

Objective: find the sacred Apartment Keys. Constraint (and here he checked his watch) twenty minutes.

Breaking out of character, he exclaimed, "Crikey! Not much time. Wish I had a dowsing rod." Or a better skill in Organization, whispered a voice in the back of his head. "That too ...ah-ha! Mission complete with ten minutes to spare! I'm on a roll." Beaming, Marché tucked the sacred item in his pocket.