That night, there were no recurring nightmares for her. She slept quietly, her mind tired. She slept so still one would think she was a log.
When she woke up the following day, she found an elf she hadn't met before, sitting beside her bed with a bunch of bathing ornaments and clothes. The woman helped April take a bath and even helped her into the creamy garment that made April ask herself if she was being prepared as a sacrificial offering of some sort.
With several other female elves she had never met before, who wore dust pink robes, April was led by Eref and Irstte to a large room a measurable distance away from her bedchamber.
They entered into a large room made of burnt sienna walls, the floor black and exuding a cool air. It was designed to look like a theater with high mezzanines. April saw several elves standing on the mezzanins, wearing loose, ceremonial robes. She noticed Safatore and the others, standing, guards holding spears behind them.
April moved her eyes to the floors she was stepping into. A table stood in the center, somewhat resembling an operating table. Three women stood in front of it. The lady who had bathed and clothed her ushered April to the others. A blue-haired woman held April's shoulder, looking down at her with a serious, very discouraging look.
"How long ago has it been since you ate?" The blue haired woman asked, her tone softer than her expression.
April took in a breath. "Last night." She sighed.
"Good," the woman with blue hair replied. "We don't want you regurgitating."
"Uh?" April blinked, puzzled. "Why would I regurgitate?" She wondered.
The woman pulled her to the maroon table and April, wide-eyed, just watched as she was made to sit on it. There was an outline of a person drawn on its surface. The blue-haired elf pushed April back, making her lay down.
"Try to be as comfortable as possible." The elf said. "Be loose, breathe fine."
She stepped back.
April watched as the three elves, one blue-haired, one blonde, and one raven-haired, stood to her left, right and at her head. For some reason, this felt like she was going in for surgery.
She looked back up to where Safatore and the others were standing at the balcony. Only Saka was missing.
"He's missing all the fun," she thought sarcastically.
The blue-haired elf pushed April's head down, a little too strongly. "Lie back."
April felt a slight crick in her neck but she maintained her neutral expression.
"Okay," she muttered.
"This won't hurt a bit…"
The other two elves, the blonde and the raven-haired, placed their hands on the sides of the table. Immediately, light flowed from their hands and onto the table's surface. It crawled over April and sent a cold sensation down her back.
"Ohh…"
She wanted to move but the blue haired she-elf standing at her head held her down with her cheeks. While April went wide-eyed, the light from the other two she-elves dissipated into thin air. Then out of that thin air appeared a mass of swirling colors right above April. They wafted around, swirling and churning, almost like a living entity, until they eventually came to a halt, gently floating above her.
"It's stopped." She stated out loud.
"It's in a ground rest." Blue haired replied.
April blinked, understanding what she meant. "It's reached the state of equilibrium. Physics." She mumbled in awe.
"Yes." Blue head replied before she waved her hands up at the aurora.
The mini aurora was disturbed and immediately formed into what April would've described as her figure. She immediately felt self-conscious.
"Less waist and more chest would've been good."
All the different colors collected and crowded on specific spots, eventually creating what April would have described as her nervous system.
The elf at April's head reached up at the floating display and used her fingers to zoom in on April's head. April saw a semblance of her brain. It was a sort of magical… fantastical, highly advanced MRI. This floating figure make of colors was a hologram of her body, her brain zoomed. Those three elves were magical doctors…
Witch doctors.
"What are you looking for?" She asked.
The blue haired she-elf scrolled through all the different colors, looking for something.
"Your God-spot," she answered, checking between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of April's brain. "Also known as your amygdala."
"Oh," April whispered. "Why?"
"It is what processes your emotions like fear, anger… and it's the source of your elven powers."
"Oh." April said, her tone filled with shock.
The woman searched and her eyes suddenly went wide. "No," she paused and stared. "This can't be right." She rotated the hologram and her eyes only bulged. "I don't believe it."
"What?" April looked up at her.
The blue haired she-elf lowered her hands and held her chest. "Your amygdala… it's missing."
April blinked. "Sorry, what?"
Everyone in the room stirred. Safatore tilted his head, his hand leaving his chin as he heard the words loud and clear resonating through the acoustic room.
"No amygdala? That can't be right." Semacoar whispered to Akka.
The brunette only narrowed her eyes.
"Loys," said the blonde to the blue haired she-elf. "It must be some sort of mistake. Let's collapse the aura sphere and look again."
Safatore frowned, up at the mezzanine, crossing his arms and biting on his lower lip.
Down below, around the magical operating table, the blonde and dark-haired she-elves removed their hands from the sides. The hologram dissipated, the light wafting down and vanishing on April's skin, before they touched the table again and another aurora rose up and out of April's skin, that same cold chill running up her spine. It formed into her figure again and again, Loys, the blue haired she-elf zoomed in on the brain and scrolled.
Her jaw stiffened.
"It's not here."
There were murmurs and quiet rumbles all around. The room seemed to come to life due to the revelation.
The one person most shocked by the news far more than anyone, was the girl lying on the table. She quietly stared up at the magical hologram of her enlarged brain.
"No amygdala…"
She knew what it was and what purpose it served. She had seen its shape in science textbooks and was aware that without one, she should have had feelings akin to a robot's. Especially the Terminator's.
"That doesn't make any sense," Safatore mumbled, the room's acoustics gently carrying his voice to every ear around. "April has the most random and strongest emotional outbursts I've ever seen. She's scared easily and gets unnecessarily angry."
April turned her gaze to the young man up the balcony.
Safatore continued.
"Without an amygdala, shouldn't she be an emotionless husk? No fear, no anger?"
"Wow, great words to describe a gal."
Loys brought her eyes back to the hologram and studied the area where the large almond shape organ should have been.
"It's not possible." She zoomed out of the brain and began scrolling through the body, her eyes uncertain.
April's thoughts were conflicted. She wondered if it could have been surgically removed somehow, for whatever reason. Or maybe she was never born with one. But how would one explain her strong emotions?
Loys kept scrolling through April's holographic body.
"What's that?" The question was asked both slowly and in a rush.
Everyone's attention veered back to the table, curious.
Loys zoomed in on the area of her interest.
"My heart?" April asked.
Loys slowly maneuvered around the enlarged organ hologram. She rotated the body and right behind the holographic heart, the holographic lungs, a ball hung right there, an orb! A large, heart-sized, golden orb. It had vessels of its own attached to it and it beat with a steady rhythm, pumping a gentle, golden fluid.
Loys slowly zoomed out of the figure. The veins and vessels were then made visible all over the holographic body. The orb and the heart stood front to back, beating in tandem, the beats synchronized and indistinguishable. It was a perplexing sight, April thought she was having one of those reccuring nightmares.
Even the people up the mezzanins were silent.
"It's… an organ," Loys explained, breaking the silence. "It's a pump just like the heart but instead of blood," she traced her fingers along the golden vessel outlines. "It pumps a raw… unfiltered aura. It has its own nervous system."
"But that's impossible!" Some random elf spoke up from the mezzanine. "With raw aura coursing through the veins, shouldn't there be some sort of inexplicable consequences?"
April glanced at her tails. There already were inexplicable consequences…
Safatore took a step back, his mouth gaping.
"With such raw power coming from this orb and no amygdala to process the emotions, this thing must cause a lot of unexpected emotional outbursts… emotional imbalances… some exaggerated anger bursts… the most random breakdowns and even, perhaps, irrational and spontaneous feelings of despair." Loys explained.
"What's the aura?" Semacoar asked.
Loys glanced down at the girl who was staring at the holographic orb and shook her head. "It could be anything."
The room fell deathly silent.
"It's either the most powerful aura sphere in the history of elf kind," Loys pulled out strands of light from the hologram. "Or it could just be a second stimulus. It's her second heart."
Everyone wore confused looks, Safatore covered his mouth, thoughtful, and Semacoar was the only one to show amusement.
"Hehehe, now I've seen it all."
Eon elbowed him and he slouched over, grunting.
April continued to stare at the orb, unblinking.
[Well, now we know why you're such an emotional wreck, you're spoiled rotten.] Saka sneered in the back of April's mind.
She finally blinked, sniffing in a lungful of air.
"No. How can I have no amygdala and two hearts?" She asked out loud.
[And I thought you were an abomination,] Saka commented. [It just turns out that you have two hearts, one of gold, even!]
April squinted. As much as Saka's telepathic words annoyed her, they had a certain truth to them.
"I'm a freak…" she thought. "I'm… a…" her eyes rolled to the back of her head, her limbs went limp and Saka's voice vanished with a grunt.
April remained still on the table, her eyes closed.
"What happened?" Akka asked.
The three elves around April were still observing when ludicrous amounts of golden sand poured down from the table, filling the room with a raining sound.
"She's leaking!" Eon shouted and the three doctors quickly backed away from the situation on the table, panicked.
The aurora figure above April dissipated and vanished back into her skin. But the golden sand continued to pour out of her like an unchecked crack in the pipes.
Saka's voice grunted. [You little rat, wake up! I don't want to go under with you again!]
But the girl remained unmoving, golden sand still pouring down. In a minute, it finally stopped, and silence engulfed the room as everyone watched, waiting to see what would happen next.
Nothing.