Washed ashore on an isolated island

I will not tell her of the three days I spent adrift alone at sea following the shipwreck. Just be aware that while three days may not seem long, it is a lifetime when you are alone, adrift, with an entire ocean surrounding you, nothing to protect you from the glare of the sun, the bite of the cold or the all-smothering blanket of darkness that night brings. I will have nightmares for a long time still about the loneliness, the hunger, the fear, the cold. 

But that is a story I shall save for my therapist. For I was saved, dear reader. By sheer chance I woke on the morning of my fourth day at sea to see that I was within sight an island.  I shouted and called, but there was nobody within earshot, so I paddled 'til my hands were raw with cold, and eventually found myself on an isolated shore.

I had no idea where I was, but was delighted to see a fellow human being standing just a few hundred yards up from the shoreline. I called out to him, but received no reply, so I walked up to where he was standing. He seemed oblivious to my presence. 

"I need something to drink," I said, miming drinking. "Where can I find water?"

"Holy rock," the man said, pointing to the rock by which he was standing.

"Very nice," I said. "What about food? Where can I get food?"  I mimed eating.

"Holy rock," the man said once more, again pointing to the rock by which he was standing. 

"Is there a village nearby?" I said. "I've just been washed ashore, I'm stranded. I will pull my weight, I don't have many practical skills, I'm not a hunter, I can't cook, but I am a writer, I could tell stories, create myths, folklores, entertain the children. Can you take me to your village?"

"Holy rock," the man said again.

In despair I found the strength to wander on, into the nearby woods. To my amazement I had gone no more than a few hundred yards before I came upon a stream. I threw myself into it and drank all I could. Afterwards I lay be the stream and slept, my first sleep for three days. When I woke I drank more. As I was drinking I watched in amazement as I saw a fish swimming in the clear water. I grabbed at it with both hands and wrestled it to the shore. It leapt out of my arms, but I blocked it's return to the water and it could only flap haplessly until I found a stone and put it out of its misery. 

I had no means of cooking the fish so I ate it raw, I was so hungry I didn't care, I have never enjoyed food so intensely.

Mindful of my position, and of my need to ingratiate myself with the natives, I kept a small piece of fish back and took it to the one native I had encountered. He was still standing over his rock.

"I brought you fish," I said.

Saying nothing he took the fish from me, placed it under the rock, and preceded to beat the fish with the rock until there was nothing remaining.

"Holy rock," he said in explanation.

As we were talking another man appeared, and approached the first.

"Who this?" he said, gesturing to me. 

"A washed up writer."

"My turn guarding holy rock," he said. "Why are you standing here?"

"I guard holy rock."  The man gestured to the rock at his feet.

"That not holy rock. That holy rock." He pointed to a second rock, 100 yards to the right and higher up.

The three of us inspected the two rocks in turn. They were identical, the same size, same shape, same geological structure, they were even identically located on similar flat plains about three yards square.

"What we do, worship both rocks?" said the second man. "Throw one in sea?"  He turned towards me. "You, writer, you know how to end things. What happens now?"

As a writer I pride myself on my creative mind, how else would I come up with endings to so many stories. So I did what I always do when trying to come up with an ending to a particularly unlikely story, I asked myself 'What would Dickens do?'