The Noise of the World by Adriana Spadoni

The next day Anne went home and the following Monday was back in the loft. A long period of stagnant waiting had ended in a new burst of hope and the place vibrated with the rush of people going and coming. Like the three prongs of a huge fork, Black Tom, Roger and Katya caught up on their unflagging faith and indefatigable energy the smaller plans and physical limitations of those about them.

Often Anne came from a revery to find that her hands had been idle on the keyboard for a long time. There was no safe, quiet spot anywhere in life. The surface at every point was heaving, just as the surface of the earth had heaved and cracked on the day of the Great Quake, torn open by forces within itself. Until then the earth had been the most stable thing in the universe. Sun and moon came and went; stars gleamed and died away; rain beat upon it and the wind swept over it, but, to human sense, the old, old earth was still. And then, in a moment, without warning, its patience exhausted, it had risen and like an angry giant, struggled to hurl aside the pigmies crawling upon it. Anne had never forgotten that feeling, as the earth began to rock, the feeling of being grasped and personally shaken by a malignant force beyond her power to propitiate, a force growing more and more furious, illimitable in its anger. In a moment it might release her or it might go on forever until it had annihilated every living thing.