The ground opened and the city went down. This is not a metaphor. The ground literally opened. The city literally went down.
ORAL HISTORY — Recorded at the Canteen, Speranza SPEAKER: Nonna Grazia, age 94, original Subsidence survivor RECORDED BY: Lina Russo, Tube Network, for the Contrada Archive DATE: Year 143 of the Underground (sound of a spoon against a bowl — the tomato soup is always the same, and Nonna Grazia always eats while she talks, because she says food and memory come from the same place) GRAZIA: You want to know how it happened. Everyone wants to know how it happened. The young ones especially — they look at the ceiling and try to imagine sky, and they can't, because sky is not something you imagine. It's something you remember, and they have nothing to remember. So they ask, and I tell them, and they nod like they understand, but they don't. You can't understand sky from a description. It's too big for words. I was eleven when the ground opened. That's what we call it — "the ground opened" — as though the earth politely made way. It didn't. It fell. Kilometres of limestone, undermined by c...
From the lore of Speranza.