Waking up from being knocked out, Lifen was bewildered to find herself lying on a soft bed, not the usual hard bed made of feather loaded bedspread and a single bolster filled with raw cotton that she was used to, but the type that her body sunk down, with bed coverings so smooth to her skin, and would, no doubt, transport her back to dream land if not of the putrid smell of bird feces invading her nostrils all the way to her sinuses, giving her a headache.
Alarmed, she sat up, looked down, and relieved, seeing she was still in her robe. She knew it was hers with the crudely hand-sewn phoenix design that her late husband bluntly described as a wet chicken with sagging long red feathers.
Then she held her breath while trying to sense her intimate parts and breathed out. "Whew! Good! No one touched me. So what could be their purpose for bringing me here?"
