This is simply a metaphor because it is comparing one thing to something that is very much unlike it.
c. a blizzard of activity
The statement that best describes how the pacing of the events heightens tension is: the slow description of the search and surroundings builds anxiety in the reader.
As a reader, you feel anxious as the girl seeks her lover in the surroundings. Everything seems to be slow and the reminiscence of her suffering and how she had escaped from it creates a feeling of rush in the reader.
According to a source on the internet, the theme that addressed in both excerpts would be the last choice - Reality can be inexplicably cruel and unfair.
This is further strengthened by the passage - How stunned I was, for example, to discover another time outside time, a universe parallel to this one, a creation within Creation, with its own laws, customs structures, and language - as if reality is deceiving and being unfair to the person.
