Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Before the embarrassing incident, she’d been planning to go back up to her room and get her phone so she could be sure she was going the right direction. However, the unpleasantness of being hit on and then belittled and shouted at in public drove that thought out of her mind. She had left her hotel and headed in what she thought was the direction of The Blind Turtle. She’d been two blocks away before she realized she didn’t have her phone.
Lili had started to turn back for it…and that was when she’d seen the man from the bar. He had an ugly look on his face and he was walking swiftly towards her. His legs were much longer than hers and he was gaining on her. When he caught her eye, he gave her an ugly grin and mouthed, “Fat bitch!” at her.
Since he was between her and the hotel, Lili had no choice but to keep going in the direction she’d already been headed. She had walked faster, but so had he. And so she had started moving even faster. At last, she was almost running—which wasn’t easy in the four-inch heels she was wearing to bolster her meager height of five foot four. She was dressed for a night on the town with colleagues—not a run for her life.
Feeling desperate, she had dived into a crowd of drunk college students and tried to get lost among them. Then she had darted down an alleyway, turned a corner, and found herself in the dark street where she was now.
“He’s gone now,” she told herself—whispering because even the sound of her own voice seemed too loud in the darkness. “Just keep going, Lili—that damn Blind Turtle place has to be around here somewhere!”
She wished she had never accepted the invitation of the other girls in her group to meet at the remote bar. Why couldn’t they have just stayed at the hotel bar? It was right there. But Cheryl, a bossy woman with a PhD in Xenobiology or something like that, had been to Tampa before. She insisted that The Blind Turtle was “just a hoot!”
“It has an island theme—palm trees and tropical atmosphere and everything! Plus, it’s ladies night and the cocktails are to die for!”
It occurred to Lili that she really might die trying to get one of the famous Blind Turtle cocktails, but she pushed the grim thought away. The man from the hotel bar was gone now—she could find her way in peace. Or maybe just go back to her hotel—if she could find it now that she was all turned around. She’d never had a very strong sense of direction and this was her first time in Tampa.
She had come down for a conference that was being hosted by the Kindred at the Tampa Human/Kindred Relations building for Women in Academia. The alien race of seven-foot-tall warriors were known for being feminists—they honestly believed that males and females were equals—which was a breath of fresh air, considering how most human men treated women.
The Kindred often sponsored academic research done by women which was wonderful, since often getting funding and grants could be difficult on Earth, where men mostly controlled the purse strings.
Lili had an extra edge—one of her best friends, Rachel Durant, was already married to a Beast Kindred warrior and living aboard the Kindred Mother Ship. Through her, Lili had been able to start a correspondence with one of the most elusive alien art collectors in the galaxy. Their name was f’loon and they were renowned for their massive collection of extraterrestrial art.
Lili held a unique degree—a PhD in Xeno-Art History. It was an academic study which had only become possible after the Kindred had come to Earth some fifteen years ago. They had opened whole new worlds of study by allowing humans to access alien races.
Being a curious person who loved to learn and see new things and places, Lili was eager to travel off-world and meet some of the alien artists she’d been studying for most of her academic career. So when the Kindred had offered this conference, she’d been eager to go. Her best friend, Rachel, had promised to get her a meeting with Commander Sylvan—the head of the Kindred High Council—so she could ask about going to meet f’loon in person.
It would be amazing to get to study their vast collection up close instead of just reading about it and seeing the few pieces they had allowed to be photographed and recorded on-line, Lili thought as she made her way down the dark alley towards the next lighted street. She could write papers about it for the rest of her life—in academia it was always “publish or perish” and she was hoping that such groundbreaking work might finally earn her tenure at the small, liberal arts college she taught at. She—