# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 94"
The desert wind stirred sand around the adobe houses of New Mexico's Pueblo villages, where cottonwood trees stood sentinel over plazas. Su Yao's truck parked near a kiva (underground ceremonial chamber), and in a sunlit courtyard, a group of Hopi women sat on woven blankets, their fingers twisting cotton into fine threads.
Their leader, 65-year-old Nampeyo, held up a finished *piki*—a thin blue cornmeal bread baked on a stone slab, but her hands soon moved to a more precious item: a cotton blanket dyed with earth tones, embroidered with rain clouds and cornstalks. "This is *katsina* work," she said in Hopi, her voice low with reverence. For the Hopi, weaving connects to the spirit world: patterns honor katsinam (guardian spirits), with lightning bolts (fertility) and eagle feathers (divine messengers) adorning textiles used in ceremonies.
Nampeyo's granddaughter Talasi, 24, showed a wedding blanket stitched with interlocking squares. "Each stitch follows the path of the sun," she explained. Cotton grown in village fields is spun during moonlit nights, dyed with plants—sage for green, rabbit brush for yellow—using recipes passed down since the 12th century.
Su Yao's team arrived with seaweed-metal fibers, hoping to preserve the delicate cotton. But when Lin displayed a machine-woven sample, Nampeyo's husband Tawa, a lean man with a turquoise necklace, frowned. "Cotton needs the breath of our hands," he said, brushing the fabric aside. "Your metal makes it forget the earth."
Crisis struck when a wildfire burned the cotton fields and dried the dye plants. "The spirits are angry at your intrusion," Tawa said, watching smoke curl over the mesas. With the *Soyal* winter solstice ceremony approaching, when new blankets honor the sun's return, the village despaired.
Su Yao sat with Nampeyo as she sorted charred cotton bolls. "We'll plant new fields," she promised. Over weeks, the team helped irrigate burned land and gather wild cotton from canyons, while learning to spin on wooden spindles. Lin coated metal threads in pine resin and yucca juice, making them blend with cotton.
Fiona designed a pattern: cornstalks growing beside ocean waves, metal threads mimicking sunlight. "It honors your earth and our sea," she said. Nampeyo traced the design, smiling. "The katsinam will approve," she said.
At *Soyal*, their blanket hung in the kiva, metal threads glinting like stars. As Su Yao left, Talasi pressed a small cotton square into her hand—a tiny cornstalk beside a wave. "Our roots now grow together," she said.