If there were a world where the entire world became a vast ocean at high tide, and most of the seawater drained into the planet's core at low tide, leaving nothing but land apart from a few water sources...
Would a world like that be interesting, or would there be something wrong with it?
The Landscale Tribe living on "Tide" thought it was fairly interesting.
To us of the Landscale Tribe, this world we named "Tide" was a fish. The rising and falling tides were the fish breathing, and we creatures living on "Tide" were the fish's scales.
As for why we believed the rising and falling tides were the fish breathing, the reason the elders gave left me unable to argue: the transitions between ocean and land were always regular. Apart from the ten or so days when the tide rose and fell, the ocean phase and land phase of "Tide" each lasted 200 days.
Very regular, just like a living creature's breathing.
We were part of the world, living on the surface of its body and breathing with it.
And just like that, everything fit together into a logically consistent whole!
Unfortunately, although we could spend long periods underwater, we were not marine creatures.
So we were always busy. Whenever the tide receded, we had to start preparing food and repairing, reinforcing, or even rebuilding our boats. When the tide arrived, we would jump aboard the boats we had spent 200 days preparing and begin 200 days of life at sea.
We generally built boats as families, but adult members of the Landscale Tribe who had yet to start families would be sent off to build little one-person boats. This was a sign of growing up.
But building boats was one thing; when the tide arrived, we would