"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 27"
The scent of jasmine hung thick in the air as Su Yao's truck bumped along a dirt road through the Oaxacan highlands, past fields of marigolds and agave plants. Up ahead, a cluster of adobe houses with red-tiled roofs emerged—a Zapotec village, where women in embroidered blouses and men in straw hats worked in the sun. At the village square, a group of weavers sat beneath a giant mesquite tree, their wooden looms clacking rhythmically. Their leader, a woman with silver braids named Doña Lupe, stood as Su Yao approached, her hands resting on a woven rug that depicted a jaguar and a serpent locked in combat. "You've come for the telar," she said, her Spanish laced with the lilting tones of Zapotec.
The Zapotec were renowned for their telar weaving—a technique using backstrap looms that had been passed down for millennia, creating textiles with vibrant patterns that told stories of their gods, their history, and their connection to the land. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this ancient craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a fabric that celebrated the Zapotec's rich cultural heritage while pushing the boundaries of sustainable fashion. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "heritage" and "innovation" diverged sharply.
Doña Lupe's granddaughter, Xochitl, who was training to be a master weaver, showed them a huipil—a traditional blouse—covered in geometric patterns. "This is the palenque," she said, pointing to a diamond shape. "It represents our ancestors' city. This line is the river that feeds us. Every stitch is a word in our story."
Su Yao's team had brought computer-aided design software, intending to digitize the Zapotec patterns and scale them up for mass production. When Lin projected a digital rendering of the jaguar-serpent design onto a screen, the weavers let out a collective gasp. Doña Lupe's brother, Don Carlos, a shaman who oversaw the village's rituals, shook his head. "You cannot put our stories in a machine," he said, his voice stern. "They lose their power. The gods will not speak through pixels."
Cultural friction escalated over color. The Zapotec used natural dyes from plants and insects: cochineal bugs for red, indigo for blue, marigolds for yellow. These colors weren't just decorative; they had spiritual significance—red for life, blue for the afterworld, yellow for the sun god. Elena, eager to showcase the seaweed-metal's iridescent properties, proposed adding purple and green hues, created by mixing synthetic dyes with the natural ones. "It will make the patterns pop," she said, showing a sample.
Xochitl's mother, Maria, who had won awards for her dyeing techniques, frowned. "Purple is the color of the royal family," she said. "We do not use it for common cloth. And green belongs to the rain god—you cannot just mix it like that. It's disrespectful."
Disaster struck on the fourth day. A torrential downpour flooded the village's drying racks, soaking their stock of dyed threads and warping the wooden looms. Worse, the cochineal bugs—collected from cactus plants in the hills—had been washed away, leaving them without their most prized red dye. Don Carlos blamed the team for angering the rain god. "You brought strange materials, strange ideas," he said, as he performed a ritual to calm the storm. "Now he's punishing us."
That night, as thunder rumbled in the distance, Su Yao sat with Doña Lupe in her kitchen, where a clay pot of mole simmered on the stove. The room smelled of chocolate and chili peppers, and outside, the rain drummed on the roof. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, stirring the mole with a wooden spoon. "We thought we were helping, but we've only caused trouble."
Doña Lupe patted her hand. "The rain god is not angry at you," she said. "He is angry because we've forgotten to honor him. My grandmother used to dance for him before the rainy season. We stopped doing that when the tourists came." She paused, then added, "But maybe your ideas aren't so strange. The gods like new things, as long as they're done with respect."
Su Yao nodded. "What if we start over? No machines, no synthetic dyes. We'll learn to weave on your backstrap looms, by hand. We'll use only your natural dyes, in the colors you say are right. And we'll let your stories guide the patterns—we'll just add a little of our seaweed-metal thread, like a whisper."
Xochitl, who had been listening from the doorway, smiled. "You'd really learn to weave on a backstrap loom? It takes years to master."
"Then we'll start today," Su Yao said. "We have a lot to learn."
Over the next three weeks, the team immersed themselves in Zapotec life. They woke at dawn to help collect cochineal bugs from the cacti, their fingers stained red for days. They learned to set up backstrap looms, tying one end to a tree and the other around their waists, their bodies swaying as they wove. Giovanni, who had always preferred large industrial looms, grumbled at first but soon found a rhythm. "It's like dancing with the fabric," he said, as Xochitl adjusted his posture.
To solve the problem of the seaweed-metal thread reacting with the natural dyes, Lin experimented with treating it with a solution made from agave sap, which the Zapotec used to preserve their textiles. The sap created a protective coating that allowed the metal to hold its shine without altering the dye colors. "It's like giving the thread a shield," she said, showing Doña Lupe a swatch where the red from cochineal bugs glowed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the Zapotec's love for symbolism, suggested incorporating small shells—collected from the Pacific coast, a two-day journey from the village—into the weave, alongside the metal threads. "They're like little gifts from the sea," she said, and Don Carlos nodded, saying it would please the ocean god.
As the rain stopped and the sun returned, the village held a celebration to honor the completion of their first collaborative piece—a huipil with the jaguar-serpent pattern woven in traditional red, blue, and yellow, accented with seaweed-metal threads that caught the light like sunlight on water and tiny shells that added a subtle crunch.
Doña Lupe draped the huipil over Su Yao's shoulders during a ceremony in the village's church, which stood beside ancient Zapotec ruins. "It tells our story," she said, "but now it has a new sentence—yours."
As the team prepared to leave, Xochitl pressed a small pouch into Su Yao's hand. Inside was a cochineal-dyed thread, wrapped around a piece of seaweed-metal. "To remember us by," she said. "And to remember that even the oldest stories can have new words."
Su Yao clutched the pouch as their truck drove through the Oaxacan highlands, the village growing smaller in the rearview mirror. She thought of the hours spent weaving on the backstrap loom, of the way the metal threads had finally learned to dance with the Zapotec's dyes, of the jaguar and serpent that now seemed to guard the fabric. The Zapotec had taught her that tradition wasn't a cage—it was a foundation, one that could support new ideas as long as they were built with respect.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Ainu team: photos of Haru wearing their moyori and seaweed-metal robe, standing beneath the Hokkaido pines. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new verse to the song—Zapotec and sea, singing together."
Somewhere in the distance, a mariachi band played, their music floating on the breeze. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the fabric of their work. And as long as they approached each new collaboration with humility and an open heart, the tapestry would only grow more vibrant.