The first days were full of hard and busy work, for the island has no lake. In addition to a shelter, I had to create rain catchers from everything panlike or dishlike among the salvage so that I might always have water. The water I collected was enough, but meager, so when I found a deposit of clay, I built a small stone oven and began making more and more rain catchers and baked them hard and watertight. When the rains continued to fall gently and fill my pans and vessels almost every day, I felt profoundly thankful, and built a huge stone altar high over the beach. I placed a vessel of rain water on the altar and prayed my thanks to the rain. I also used my oven to bake clay people figurines, people to set in front of the altar to pray for me when I had to work.

Some of my most treasured possessions from the wreck made their way into my new pantheon. In the kitchen ware I found a broken glass jug, and discovered that the thick, heavy shards could be chipped and shaped into excellent knives for cutting and carving, and also brilliantly sharp spear-tips for fishing. I was even able to cut fabric with them, and cut out velvet panels from a silly costume dress, sewed them together, and stuffed them with the feathers from the garish feather boas to make the softest, nicest pillow a body could want. I took one of the finest pieces of the glass, one that caught the light just right, and laid it on a new altar. I made some prayer people for the Glass Altar as well.

There were a few matchbooks among the kitchen things, so I was able to build kind, warming fires for the colder nights, and I could cook the fish I caught on my glass-tipped spears. I felt so warmed and nourished by the fires that I erected a fire altar and placed dry grass, a piece of pretty driftwood, and one of my treasured matches on it. Then I made some more prayer people to stand in front of it.

One of the suitcases contained a couple of boxes of plain paper. It delighted me to write on it, stories and poems of far away lands full of roads and lights. I wrote on every inch of the paper, on both sides, and I would use carefully sharpened and charred twigs for my pencils. I wrote the most beautiful poem I could think of about paper, and placed it on this new altar. And I made yet more prayer people to pray to paper.

My gratitude brought forth unexpected bounty. The altars were most generous. Now and again the current would carry something new to the island. The Rain Altar sent a big, plastic tarp, and I was able to build a lined reservoir pit with it. The Glass Altar sent me so many bottles, I barely needed new spear tips anymore, and began to use them as hip flasks. The Fire Altar sent me a beautiful waterproof lighter and I was able to cook and warm myself every day, and the Paper Altar sent me a whole crate of books and writing paper, a treasure trove for my starved mind.

Of course, it was only a matter of time. I fashioned the most exquisite prayer person I could possibly make, one with wide eyes and beautitul hands, with long limbs and a slender neck. I took a sheet of my precious paper and wrote "smart, witty, and kind" across it, and placed it in the prayer person's hands before baking it solid. Then I built a new and fine altar, an altar almost as high as the Rain Altar itself, and I festooned it with feathers and flowers, and everything lovely. Then I placed the new prayer person upon the altar.