"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 47"
The mist hung low over the rice terraces of Bali, Indonesia, where emerald-green fields cascaded down the mountains like staircases to the sea. Su Yao's car wound through villages with bamboo houses and Hindu temples topped with tiered meru towers, their roofs glittering with gold leaf. Near the shore, in a courtyard surrounded by frangipani trees, a group of women sat on woven kain cloths, their hands moving over looms strung with threads dyed in vibrant hues of saffron, indigo, and turmeric. Their leader, a woman with a sari of red and gold and a flower crown in her hair named Dewi, looked up as they approached, pausing her work on a songket—a ceremonial fabric embroidered with gold thread. "You've come for the tenun," she said, her Balinese language musical and soft, gesturing to the textiles that hung like tapestries from nearby bamboo poles.
The Balinese people have practiced tenun (weaving) for over a millennium, their craft deeply tied to Hindu rituals and the island's spiritual calendar. Each pattern, known as kawung (palm blossoms), parang (knife motifs), or truntum (diamond clusters), carries sacred meaning: kawung symbolizes purity, parang wards off evil spirits, and truntum represents prosperity. Weaving is a devotional act—women recite mantras while working, and each songket is blessed by a pedanda (Hindu priest) before being used in temple ceremonies, weddings, or cremations. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this divine craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Balinese agama (spiritual life) while adding durability to the delicate silk and cotton fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "sacred" and "innovation" was as different as the island's volcanic soil and the ocean depths.
Dewi's daughter, Sari, a 26-year-old weaver who also managed a cultural preservation center, held up a songket with parang patterns in gold and black. "This is for the odalan (temple anniversary)," she said, tracing the sharp, angular motifs with her finger. "My grandmother wove it during puspa (flower moon), when the gods are said to walk the earth. Each gold thread is blessed with holy water from Tirta Empul (sacred spring). You don't just make it—you invite the divine to reside in it."
Su Yao's team had brought digital embroidery machines and synthetic gold thread, intending to mass-produce simplified songket patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "luxury spiritual" collection. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-stitched parang motifs, the women stopped weaving, their needles frozen. Dewi's husband, Wayan, a pedanda with a shaven head and white robes, stood and raised his hands in a gesture of blessing—and rebuke. "You think you can print the gods' language with machines?" he said, his voice firm but calm. "These threads carry prana (life force). Your metal has no prana—it is a shadow."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Balinese weavers use silk from local silkworms and cotton grown in the island's fertile valleys, dyed with plants harvested according to the wuku (21-day calendar): indigo during sinta (love), turmeric during landep (strength), and saffron during ukiran (creation). The dyeing process includes offerings of canang sari (small baskets of flowers, rice, and incense) to the gods, and the looms are sprinkled with holy water daily. The seaweed-metal blend, despite its oceanic origins, was viewed as a profane intrusion. "Your thread comes from the salt sea," Dewi said, placing a sample on the ground. "Our gods live in freshwater springs and rice fields. They will not recognize it."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the turmeric dye, turning it a muddy orange and causing the silk fibers to break. "It defiles the prana," Sari said, holding up a ruined swatch where the parang motifs had frayed. "Our songket should last for centuries, its gold glowing brighter with each ceremony. This will crumble like dried leaves."
Then disaster struck: a volcanic eruption on nearby Mount Agung sent ash clouds across the island, coating the rice terraces and damaging the dye plants. The weavers' stored silk, kept in a bamboo hut, was stained gray by the ash, and their supply of gold thread—sourced from local artisans—was buried under debris. With the odalan approaching and no materials to weave new songket, the village faced a spiritual crisis. Wayan, performing a yajna (fire ritual) to appease the gods, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from the deep sea to our sacred island," he chanted, as flames consumed offerings of flowers and incense. "Now Gunung Agung (mountain god) is angry, and he spews his wrath."
That night, Su Yao sat with Dewi in her bamboo house, where a gombrang (clay stove) simmered with lawar (spiced meat salad), filling the air with the scent of coconut and lemongrass. Outside, the sound of gamelan music drifted from a nearby temple, and the air still carried the faint tang of volcanic ash. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping jamu (herbal tea). "We came here thinking we could celebrate your craft, but we've only shown disrespect."
Dewi smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of klepon (glutinous rice ball with palm sugar). "The eruption is not your fault," she said. "Gunung Agung speaks when he is forgotten. My grandfather used to say that ash makes the earth fertile—destruction brings renewal. But your thread—maybe it's a sign. Our young people wear fast fashion. We need to show them our tenun can dance with new materials, without losing its soul."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like frangipani in the rain. "What if we start over? We'll help you clean the silk, replant the dye gardens, and dig out the gold thread. We'll learn to weave tenun by hand, using your looms and techniques. We won't use your sacred patterns for commercial gain. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your kawung with ocean waves, honoring both your gods and the sea. And we'll let Wayan bless the metal thread with holy water, so it carries prana."
Sari, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her sari rustling. "You'd really learn to embroider with gold thread? It takes years to make the stitches small enough to look like sunlight—your eyes will strain, your hands will cramp."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the mantras while we weave. Respect means speaking the language of the divine."
Over the next month, the team immersed themselves in Balinese life. They helped wash ash from the silk using water from Tirta Empul, their hands numb from the cold spring water, and traveled to the slopes of Mount Batur to collect fresh dye plants, guided by Dewi's father, who taught them to leave canang sari at each harvest site. They sat in the courtyard, weaving on bamboo looms and reciting simple mantras—"Om Shanti (peace)"—as the women sang kecak (monkey chants) to keep rhythm. "The thread must move like a dancer," Dewi said, adjusting Su Yao's posture. "Tense, and it breaks; loose, and the pattern falters. Like life—balance is everything."
They learned to dye fibers in clay pots, their clothes stained yellow and blue as Sari taught them to time the process with the phases of the moon. "Turmeric needs to steep during wuku kuningan (golden moon)," she said, stirring a pot of saffron liquid. "Rushing it is like rushing a prayer—it doesn't reach the gods." They practiced the prada stitch, which attaches gold thread to the fabric in tiny loops, their progress slow but steady as an elderly weaver named Nyi Mas—who had woven for nine temple odalans—corrected their work. "The gold must float on the cloth," she said, her gnarled fingers deft as she demonstrated. "Like the gods float above the earth."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and turmeric, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of coconut oil and sacred ash from the yajna, a mixture Balinese use to purify sacred objects. The oil sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the ash infused it with prana—or so Wayan declared after performing a blessing. "It's like giving the thread a Balinese soul," she said, showing Dewi a swatch where the gold now glowed against the turmeric yellow.
Fiona, inspired by the way Bali's rivers flow into the Indian Ocean, designed a new pattern called Air Suci (Sacred Water), merging kawung palm motifs with ocean waves in seaweed-metal thread. The palms gradually transform into waves, symbolizing the connection between mountain springs and the sea. "It honors your Tirta Empul and our tides," she said, and Wayan nodded, running his hand over the design. "The gods made both fresh and salt water," he said. "This cloth is a bridge between them."
As the dye gardens began to regrow and the ash was cleared from the village, the community held a melasti (purification ceremony) at the beach, where they blessed the new textiles with offerings to the sea god Varuna. They unveiled their first collaborative piece: a songket with the Air Suci pattern, its silk fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the sunlight like bioluminescence, and traditional parang borders that glowed against the sand.
Dewi draped the songket over Su Yao's shoulders during the ceremony, as gamelan music played and priestesses chanted. "This cloth has two souls," she said, her eyes shining. "One from our temples, one from your sea. But both are filled with prana."
As the team's car drove away from Bali, Sari ran along the shore, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a corner of songket, embroidered with a tiny palm blossom and wave in seaweed-metal, tucked inside a coconut shell. "To remember us by," read a note in Balinese and Indonesian. "Remember that the gods reside in all elements—earth, fire, water, air, and even your thread."
Su Yao clutched the package as the island faded into the distance, its beaches and volcanoes merging into a blue haze. She thought of the hours spent weaving in the courtyard, the canang sari offerings, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the silk. The Balinese had taught her that tradition isn't a cage—it's a conversation with the divine, one that can welcome new voices without losing its sacred melody.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Quechua team: photos of Marisol holding their collaborative poncho at a mountain festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new stitch—Balinese temples and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a gamelan gong echoed across the water, its deep tone a benediction. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with reverence—honoring the sacred, listening to the divine—the tapestry would only grow more luminous, a testament to the beauty of all creation woven together.