"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 66"
The sun blazed over the valleys of Oaxaca, where agave plants stood sentinel on terraced hillsides and adobe villages clustered around ancient Zapotec ruins. Su Yao's car wound along roads lined with cypress trees, passing women in embroidered blouses carrying bundles of wool on their heads, until it reached a community nestled between two mountains. In a courtyard shaded by a giant ceiba tree—sacred to the Zapotec— a group of weavers sat at backstrap looms, their bodies swaying in rhythm as they wove vibrant patterns into woolen cloth. Their leader, a woman with a red headscarf and hands calloused from decades of weaving named Xochitl, looked up as they approached, holding a finished telar—a wool blanket decorated with symbols of the sun, moon, and stars in deep purples, golds, and greens. "You've come for the telar," she said, her Zapotec language melodic like the chirp of quetzals, gesturing to piles of blankets folded beside clay dye pots.
The Zapotec people of Oaxaca have woven telar for over 2,000 years, a craft intertwined with their cosmological beliefs and agricultural cycles. The telar—a handwoven blanket used in ceremonies and daily life—serves as a map of the Zapotec universe: the center represents the world tree, the borders depict the four cardinal directions, and patterns of zigzags symbolize lightning, which connects the earth to the sky. Woven from wool sheared from local sheep and dyed with natural pigments, each telar requires up to three months of work, with weavers timing their projects to align with the phases of the moon. Dyes are made from plants and insects native to the Oaxacan highlands: cochineal (a parasitic insect) for red, indigo for blue, and maguey leaves for green, with recipes passed down through female lineages. The weaving process begins with a ceremony to honor Pitao Cozobi (the corn god) and Cocijo (the rain god), and weavers chant prayers to the ancestors while working to "infuse the cloth with cosmic energy." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this sacred craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Zapotec traditions while adding durability to the wool fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "cosmic balance" and "innovation" was as different as the arid mountains and the Pacific Ocean's tides.
Xochitl's granddaughter, Lupita, a 28-year-old who taught weaving classes while studying Zapotec astronomy, held up a telar with a pattern of interlocking suns and cornstalks. "This is for the Guelaguetza festival," she said, tracing the motifs that celebrate the harvest. "My grandmother wove it during the Mitote (ritual dance) moon when the veil between worlds is thin—too many suns, and the cloth brings drought; too few, and the crops fail. You don't just make telar—you weave the balance of the universe into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought industrial looms and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified telar patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Mexican folk art" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven cornstalk motifs, the weavers froze, their wooden shuttles hanging motionless. Xochitl's husband, Tlaxcaltecatl, a 70-year-old farmer with a weathered face and a staff carved from oak, stood and shook his head. "You think machines can capture the tonalli (life force) of our cosmos?" he said, his voice rough as dried corn husks. "Telar carries the breath of the mountains and the wisdom of our ancestors. Your metal has no breath, no wisdom—it's a stone, not a sacred map."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Zapotec weavers shear sheep during the dry season, offering the first fleece to the earth by burying it beneath the ceiba tree to "nourish the spirits." The wool is washed in mountain streams that flow from sacred springs, where women leave offerings of corn tortillas to Cocijo. Dyes are prepared in clay pots over fires of pine wood, with each batch stirred counterclockwise to "align with the rotation of the stars," and the cochineal insects are harvested by hand during the full moon to "ensure the red holds the sun's power." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an outsider. "Your thread comes from salt water that erodes our coasts," Xochitl said, placing the sample on a mat woven from palm leaves. "It will never hold the balance of our universe."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the cochineal dye, turning it a muddy brown and causing the wool fibers to weaken. "It angers the sun god," Lupita said, holding up a ruined swatch where the sun motifs had blurred. "Our telar grows more powerful with each ceremony, like a well-tended cornfield. This will decay like blighted corn, breaking the cosmic balance."
Then disaster struck: wildfires swept through the Oaxacan highlands, destroying the indigo fields and cochineal colonies used for dyeing and damaging the weavers' backstrap looms—some carved with celestial symbols that date to pre-Columbian times. The stored wool, kept in a thatched hut, was singed by flying embers, and their supply of rare purple dye (made from a mountain orchid) was incinerated. With the Day of the Dead approaching, when new telar are used to honor ancestors, the community faced a spiritual and ecological crisis. Tlaxcaltecatl, performing a ritual to calm the fire god by offering roasted corn and burning copal incense, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something foreign to our sacred land," he chanted, as smoke from the ritual fire curled toward the mountains. "Now the gods are angry, and they burn our offerings."
That night, Su Yao sat with Xochitl in her adobe house, where a clay stove simmered with mole (chocolate sauce), filling the air with the scent of cinnamon and chili. The walls were hung with telar blankets and paintings of Zapotec deities, and a small altar held candles, marigolds, and photographs of ancestors. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping atole (corn drink) sweetened with piloncillo. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Xochitl smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of pan de muerto (Day of the Dead bread). "The fires are not your fault," she said. "The mountains breathe fire sometimes—that is how new life begins. My grandmother used to say that even burned wool can be rewoven, like a burned field can grow again. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that telar can hold new stories, without losing our cosmic heart. Young people buy blankets from factories. We need to show them our weaving still speaks to the gods."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like corn in the rainy season. "What if we start over? We'll help replant the indigo, rebuild the cochineal colonies, and salvage the singed wool. We'll learn to weave telar on backstrap looms, using your moon calendar. We won't copy your sacred patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your world tree with our ocean waves, honoring both your mountains and the sea. And we'll let Tlaxcaltecatl bless the metal thread with a corn ceremony, so it carries the gods' favor."
Lupita, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her embroidered skirt rustling like dried leaves. "You'd really learn to weave the tecuanes (jaguar) pattern? It takes years to master the backstrap tension—your shoulders will ache, your legs will cramp from sitting cross-legged."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the chants you sing to Cocijo while working. Respect means speaking to your gods."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Zapotec life. They helped clear fire-damaged land and plant new indigo crops, their hands scratched by agave thorns, and built stone terraces to protect future dye plants from erosion. They traveled with Tlaxcaltecatl to collect wild cochineal insects from cactus plants, learning to identify the full moon's glow that makes the insects most potent. They sat at backstrap looms tied to the ceiba tree, their bodies swaying in rhythm with the weavers, as the women chanted prayers to the ancestors. "The loom is like the universe," Xochitl said, adjusting Su Yao's strap. "Your body must move with the stars—too tight, and the fabric warps; too loose, and the pattern collapses. Like life, balance is everything."
They learned to dye wool in clay pots over pine fires, their hands stained red and blue as Lupita taught them to add agave nectar to the cochineal dye to "make the color shine like the sun." "You have to crush 1,000 cochineal insects for one pot of red dye," she said, demonstrating the mortar and pestle technique. "Each one is a gift from the cactus spirit—waste them, and the color fades." They practiced the plain weave that forms the telar's foundation, their progress slow but steady as Xochitl's 85-year-old mother, Meztli, who remembered the old rituals before electricity, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The world tree's trunk must be straight, like the path to the gods," she said, her gnarled fingers brushing the fabric. "A crooked trunk leads to chaos."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and cochineal dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of maguey sap and copalm resin, a mixture Zapotecs use to waterproof pottery. The sap sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the resin added a subtle shine that Tlaxcaltecatl declared "glows like the morning star." "It's like giving the thread a Zapotec soul," she said, showing Xochitl a swatch where the red now blazed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Oaxaca's rivers flow to the Pacific, designed a new pattern called "Mountain Roots, Ocean Tides," merging the world tree with wave motifs in seaweed-metal thread. The tree's roots gradually transform into waves, symbolizing how the Zapotec cosmos connects to the ocean. "It honors your gods and our sea," she said, and Tlaxcaltecatl nodded, pressing his hand to the fabric in a traditional greeting. "The gods made both mountains and water," he said. "This cloth understands their language."
As the rains came and the dye plants sprouted new leaves, the community held a Mitote ceremony to bless their first collaborative telar. With dancers wearing feathered headdresses and musicians playing flutes, they unfurled the blanket beneath the ceiba tree. The telar featured the "Mountain Roots, Ocean Tides" pattern, its wool fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on water, and traditional lightning zigzags that glowed against the purple background.
Xochitl draped the telar over Su Yao's shoulders, as the community chanted prayers to the ancestors. "This cloth has two souls," she said, her voice rising with the chorus. "One from our Oaxacan mountains, one from your sea. But both dance with the gods."
As the team's car drove away from the village, Lupita ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of wool dyed red with cochineal, stitched with a tiny world tree and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in corn husks. "To remember us by," read a note in Zapotec and Spanish. "Remember that mountains and sea are both sacred—like your thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Oaxacan valleys faded into the distance, the sun setting behind the mountains in a blaze of orange. She thought of the hours spent weaving beneath the ceiba tree, the chants that seemed to weave themselves into the wool, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the fibers. The Zapotec had taught her that tradition isn't about being trapped in ancient ways—it's about keeping the conversation with the cosmos alive, letting the old patterns evolve while staying connected to the sacred.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Uzbek team: photos of Zara holding their collaborative adras at a Silk Road festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new world tree—Oaxacan mountains and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a flute played a haunting melody that echoed across the valleys, a reminder of the music that connects all living things. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cosmos to honor, countless stories to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the gods, honoring the ancestors—the tapestry would only grow more sacred, a testament to the beauty of all things connected under the same sun and stars.