"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 67"
The morning sun painted the Andes in hues of pink and gold, where snow-capped peaks pierced the sky and terraced fields clung to mountain slopes like green staircases. Su Yao's jeep climbed a winding dirt road, passing Quechua villages with stone houses and women in colorful polleras (skirts) herding llamas, until it reached a community nestled in a valley at 12,000 feet. In a courtyard surrounded by qollqa (Inca storehouses), a group of weavers sat on woven mats, their hands moving with practiced speed as they twisted vibrant yarns on backstrap looms. Their leader, a woman with braids wrapped in red yarn and a poncho draped over her shoulders named Mama Killa, looked up as they approached, holding a finished garment—intricate patterns of condors, pumas, and snakes in earthy browns, fiery reds, and sky blues. "You've come for the poncho," she said, her Quechua language rolling like mountain streams, gesturing to piles of textiles laid out to catch the sun's first light.
The Quechua people of the Andes have woven ponchos for over 1,500 years, a craft rooted in Inca cosmology and agricultural cycles. The poncho—a rectangular woolen garment with a slit for the head—serves as both clothing and a map of the Quechua universe: the top represents the hanan pacha (upper world of gods), the middle the kay pacha (human world), and the bottom the ukhu pacha (underworld of ancestors). Woven from ultra-fine alpaca wool shorn from animals raised in high-altitude pastures, each poncho requires up to four months of work, with weavers aligning their projects with the movements of the Pleiades constellation. Dyes are made from plants and minerals found in the mountains: cochineal for red, mollusk shells for purple, and llanten leaves for green, with recipes guarded by mama t'ika (master dyers) through oral tradition. The weaving begins with a pago a la tierra (offering to the earth) ceremony, where coca leaves and chicha (corn beer) are buried to thank Pachamama (Mother Earth), and weavers chant hymns to Inti (the sun god) while working to "infuse the cloth with cosmic energy." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this ancient craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Quechua traditions while adding durability to the delicate alpaca fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "sacred balance" and "innovation" was as different as the high Andes and the Pacific Ocean's depths.
Mama Killa's granddaughter, Aymara, a 26-year-old who ran a cultural center while studying Inca astronomy, held up a poncho with a pattern of interlocking squares that mimicked Inca stonework. "This is for the Inti Raymi (sun festival)," she said, tracing the motifs that represent the sun's journey across the sky. "My grandmother spun the yarn during the Killa Raymi (moon festival) when feminine energy is strongest—too many condors, and the cloth brings arrogance; too few, and it loses protection. You don't just make ponchos—you weave the harmony of the three worlds into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought electric spinning wheels and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified poncho patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Andean luxury" fashion line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven condor motifs, the weavers froze, their wooden spindles clattering to the ground. Mama Killa's husband, Tupaq, a 68-year-old pallaq (community leader) with a staff carved from Andean cedar, stood and shook his head slowly. "You think machines can capture the kawsay (life force) of Pachamama?" he said, his voice deep as mountain thunder. "Ponchos carry the breath of the mountains and the wisdom of the Inkas. Your metal has no breath, no wisdom—it's a stone, not a sacred map."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Quechua weavers shear alpacas during the Ausangate pilgrimage, when the snow-capped mountain is said to "awaken" and bless the animals. The wool is cleaned in glacial streams, where women leave coca leaves as offerings to Mama Coca (the spirit of the coca plant), and spun into yarn using drop spindles decorated with beads that represent the stars. Dyes are prepared in clay pots over fires of q'olle wood, with each batch stirred clockwise to "follow the sun's path," and the cochineal insects are harvested during the summer solstice to "ensure the red holds Inti's fire." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from salt water that erodes our coasts," Mama Killa said, placing the sample on a toquilla straw mat. "It will never hold the balance of the three worlds."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the cochineal dye, turning it a dull maroon and causing the alpaca fibers to weaken. "It angers Inti," Aymara said, holding up a ruined swatch where the condor's wings had frayed. "Our ponchos grow more powerful with each ceremony, like a well-tended q'ero (sacred bundle). This will decay like frostbitten crops, breaking Pachamama's harmony."
Then disaster struck: a violent snowstorm swept through the Andes, burying alpaca pastures under six feet of snow and killing hundreds of animals. The weavers' looms—some passed down from Inca times and carved with astronomical symbols—were damaged when adobe walls collapsed under the snow's weight, and their stored wool, kept in a qollqa, was frozen solid. With the Qoyllur Rit'i (star snow festival) approaching, when new ponchos are worn to honor the Pleiades, the community faced a spiritual and ecological crisis. Tupaq, performing a ch'alla (libation ceremony) by sprinkling chicha on the snow and reciting Inca prayers, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from the deep to our sacred mountains," he chanted, as snowflakes melted on the offering bowl. "Now Pachamama is angry, and she hides her gifts."
That night, Su Yao sat with Mama Killa in her stone house, where a clay stove simmered with locro (potato stew), filling the air with the scent of huacatay (Andean mint) and ají (chili). The walls were hung with ponchos and woven khipus (Inca recording devices), and a small altar held coca leaves, a llama figurine, and a piece of puma bone. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping mate de coca (coca tea) to combat altitude sickness. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Mama Killa smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of pisco sour candy. "The storm is not your fault," she said. "Pachamama tests us to make us strong, like the mountains test the condors. My grandmother used to say that even frozen wool can be warmed, like a frozen heart can be thawed. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that ponchos can tell new stories, without losing our cosmic roots. Young people buy jackets from Lima. We need to show them our weaving still speaks to the gods."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like issoy flowers after snowmelt. "What if we start over? We'll help dig out the alpacas, build shelters to protect them from future storms, and thaw the frozen wool. We'll learn to weave ponchos on backstrap looms, using your Pleiades calendar. We won't copy your sacred patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your condors with our ocean waves, honoring both your mountains and the sea. And we'll let Tupaq bless the metal thread with a ch'alla ceremony, so it carries Pachamama's favor."
Aymara, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her pollera rustling like dried grass. "You'd really learn to weave the chakana (Inca cross) pattern? It takes years to master the diagonal lines—your eyes will cross, your back will ache from the loom's tension."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the hymns you sing to Inti while working. Respect means praying with your gods."
Over the next four months, the team immersed themselves in Quechua life. They helped dig snow tunnels to reach trapped alpacas, their hands numb from cold, and built stone shelters with straw roofs to protect the surviving animals. They traveled with Tupaq to collect wild cochineal from cactus plants growing on sun-exposed slopes, learning to read the mountain's microclimates. They sat on woven mats, their bodies swaying with the backstrap looms, as the women chanted hymns to Inti that had been passed down for centuries. "The loom is like the Andes," Mama Killa said, adjusting Su Yao's strap. "Your body must bend with the mountain's rhythm—too rigid, and the fabric cracks; too loose, and the pattern scatters. Like Pachamama, it requires strength and flexibility."
They learned to dye alpaca wool in clay pots over wood fires, their hands stained red and blue as Aymara taught them to add q'enco (mountain ash) to the cochineal dye to "make the color shine like Inti's rays." "You have to crush the cochineal with a stone mortar 108 times," she said, referencing the sacred number in Inca cosmology, "once for each step to the mountain top." They practiced the double weave that creates the poncho's reversible patterns, their progress slow but steady as Mama Killa's 87-year-old mother, Rupha, who remembered the last malku (traditional healer), corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The chakana's cross must align with the four winds," she said, her gnarled fingers brushing the fabric. "A crooked cross brings misfortune to the wearer."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and cochineal dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of llama fat and puya flower extract, a mixture Quechua herders use to waterproof leather. The fat sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the extract added a subtle fragrance that Tupaq declared "smells like mountain meadows." "It's like giving the thread a Quechua soul," she said, showing Mama Killa a swatch where the red now blazed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Andean rivers flow to the Pacific, designed a new pattern called "Condor of the Two Skies," merging condor motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The condor's wings gradually transform into waves, symbolizing how the Quechua cosmos connects to the ocean. "It honors your mountains and our sea," she said, and Tupaq nodded, pressing his hand to the fabric in a traditional munay (love) gesture. "Pachamama made both earth and water," he said. "This cloth understands their union."
As the snow melted and new grass sprouted in the pastures, the community held a Qoyllur Rit'i celebration, with dancers in feathered headdresses and musicians playing zampoñas (panpipes). They unveiled their first collaborative poncho beneath a sacred rock formation said to resemble a condor. The garment featured the "Condor of the Two Skies" pattern, its alpaca fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on snow, and traditional chakana borders that glowed against the blue background.
Mama Killa draped the poncho over Su Yao's shoulders, as the community chanted hymns to Inti. "This cloth has two spirits," she said, her voice rising with the chorus. "One from our Andes, one from your sea. But both belong to Pachamama."
As the team's jeep descended the mountain, Aymara ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of alpaca wool dyed red with cochineal, stitched with a tiny condor and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in coca leaves. "To remember us by," read a note in Quechua and Spanish. "Remember that mountains and sea are both Pachamama's children—like your thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Andes faded into the distance, their peaks glowing pink in the sunset. She thought of the hours spent weaving under the Pleiades, the hymns that seemed to weave themselves into the wool, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the alpaca fibers. The Quechua had taught her that tradition isn't about being trapped in ancient ways—it's about maintaining a living relationship with the sacred, letting the old patterns evolve while staying rooted in Pachamama's wisdom.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Zapotec team: photos of Lupita holding their collaborative telar at a Day of the Dead celebration. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new condor—Andean mountains and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, zampoñas played a haunting melody that echoed across the valleys, a reminder of the music that connects all living things to Pachamama. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless worlds 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 mountains, honoring the earth—the tapestry would only grow more sacred, a testament to the beauty of all things woven together in Pachamama's embrace.