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It was good that Panette had left.
And, in an entirely different way, it was probably good that their parents had left, too.
There wasn’t a better outcome than this.
But all the reassurances Pandreo could tell himself didn’t change how quiet their little house behind the church had become.
Pandreo’s little house, now.
He’d taken a week or so to try to appreciate his newfound freedom, the same need to take care of himself but without his father coming through and breaking whatever he didn’t like, or his mother starting a fight over a dish that hadn’t been cleaned just yet. He tried to have a good time. Ate the few treats he’d stashed away without having to hide in his room. Slept in his parents big bed and sprawled out how he liked. Had a little fire in the yard like he was on a camping trip.
But it was all hollow. The idea of what was supposed to be fun, or good, or happy.
Ten days after his parents had made it clear they weren’t coming back, and he wasn’t going with them, Pandreo stood in the kitchen. Just his kitchen, now. He looked around at the careful cleaning job he’d done, the neatly-stacked dishes, the perfectly-swept floor. He’d never swept right, always in a rush and missing the nooks and crannies, but this time he’d gotten every corner.
He wanted someone to notice. A half-assed remark. A backhanded compliment that told him he could do better, but this was fine, compared to his usual. Even glazed eyes brushing over the empty sink and making no note at all.
Something. Anything. The silence felt like it was going to suffocate him. Nothing had a face, and it was staring him down like a rat it wanted to snap the neck of.
He wrapped his hand around a plate from the top of the pile, and he threw it on the floor.
The loud shattering sound helped. It broke the nothing, it was cathartic, it felt good.
He dropped to his knees, and he screamed as loud as he could. That felt good, too.
Something. Anything. He couldn’t be alone if it wasn’t so damned quiet. The world was bigger than this empty home. Just his home, now.
He screamed again, and again, until he ran out of breath, until he was curled over and panting and could think of nothing but the burn in his lungs and the scratching in his throat. He screamed again. He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t alone. He couldn’t be alone.
Pandreo slid onto his side, stared blankly at the shards of the plate he’d broken, and waited to fall asleep.
— x —
Panette had hated the church. It represented something cruel to her, Pandreo thought. Something that took people, that took their mother, that pushed their father to his thin, thin limit.
He wondered if she would hate him too, seeing him stand at its entrance. Waiting to be taken, to be swallowed up, to– to break the nothing that breathed down his neck.
Panette had asked him once if their parents loved the church more than their children. Pandreo had answered vaguely at the time, confirmed only that he loved her, every sharp angle and rough edge. But the answer he’d felt in his heart rang truer than ever: It wasn’t that their parents loved the church more. It was that their parents didn’t love anything at all.
After she’d left, it was only a matter of time. Truthfully, Pandreo had expected them to never come back from looking for her, to use the excuse to disappear. It would’ve been smarter of them, anyway, saved whatever face they might have cared about. Leaving their son alone so they could find their lost daughter, that was noble. That was a story worth telling. The story they had given instead, a pious mission to spread the word of the Divine Dragon, only got Pandreo the occasional piteous stare.
He stepped into the near-abandoned church, and he looked for a priest.
— x —
The world will be saved. It was what a boy left behind needed to hear. That the world was broken, and it not just could, not just must, but would be saved. A prophecy that acknowledged his pain, and promised that someday, others wouldn’t experience the same. Looking back, Pandreo could see the priest’s words for what they likely were: a recruitment tactic. Get people in the door for the better of the church, tell them whatever they wanted to hear.
It didn’t matter, though, how empty-hearted his parents’ church was. Because they were gone, and the priest left was on his way out, and the congregation barely mustered up enough people for a weekly sermon.
It was Pandreo’s little church, now.
All it took was some hard labor and an earnest desire to learn, to lead, to push forward, and he as much as had the keys handed to him within a year. He watched how the priests did things, saw the habits baked in by his parents and their priests before them and every other person who had made this place the husk it was. He learned their ways, and cast each one off at the first chance.
The world will be saved. It was a joyous message. A beacon of hope in the dark. A precious oasis.
Pandreo’s sermons were loud, and passionate, screaming and shouting not in anger or fear but to fend off the nothing that had once threatened him, and could threaten his flock just the same. His church would not take them, would not swallow them, would demand nothing from them. His church would love them, every sharp angle and rough edge. Welcome them, for a few minutes or forever.
The first time someone told him he sounded like he was howling his speeches, they were grimacing, like it was an insult. Like he should be ashamed of his joy. He grinned, and thanked them, and when he howled in earnest, a few of the people gathered for prayer laughed, and joined him. When he howled again, nearly half of them did too. When the spirit took them, when hope overwhelmed despair, when they believed in a brighter future, they raised their voices in a useless, inelegant, loud cacophony.
Pandreo wasn’t alone, and neither was anyone else. The world will be saved, but until then, they would save each other.