# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 100"
The Indian Ocean sun blazed over Seychelles' coral reefs, where granite boulders jutted from turquoise waters and palm-fringed beaches curved like crescent moons. Su Yao's boat glided into a lagoon, passing fishermen in outrigger canoes and women selling vanilla pods at a floating market, until it reached a small island where a gathering of weavers from across the globe had assembled. In a clearing beneath a centuries-old takamaka tree, a circle of wooden looms surrounded a central platform, each tended by artisans in traditional dress—Berber women in indigo veils, Kikuyu weavers in red *kikoi*, Ifugao elders in woven *wanno*, and many more.
At the center stood Maelis, a 72-year-old Seychellois weaver of Creole and African descent, her hands calloused from decades of working *lontan* (local fiber). She held up a frayed textile—a patchwork of fabrics from her island's history: cotton from India, silk from China, linen from Europe, stitched together with coconut fiber. "This is our *memwa* (memory)," she said in Creole, her voice warm as the trade winds. "But memory needs new threads to stay alive."
The gathering was Su Yao's idea—a celebration of their hundredth chapter of collaboration. Over the past months, she'd invited artisans from every community they'd worked with, from Ethiopia's Oromo weavers to Alaska's Tlingit basketmakers. They'd come to create something unprecedented: a *Tapestry of One Hundred Threads*, weaving together techniques, motifs, and materials from across their cultures, bound by the seaweed-metal fiber that had become their bridge.
Tensions emerged quickly. When Lin laid out a digital design merging all motifs into a single pattern, a murmur rose. "This flattens our stories," said Kamau, the Kikuyu elder, tapping the screen. "A *kikoi*'s stripes don't mix with a Berber diamond—they dance beside each other." Maelis nodded, running her fingers over the frayed patchwork. "Creole weaving teaches us that difference is a strength, not a problem. My grandmother used to say, 'A mat with only one kind of fiber blows away in a storm.'"
Disaster struck that night when a sudden cyclone swept through the lagoon, tearing tents, soaking supplies, and scattering precious materials—Oromo wool, Ifugao abaca, Berber camel hair—across the beach. By dawn, the weavers stood amid the wreckage, staring at damaged textiles and broken looms. "This is a sign," muttered a Sami elder, brushing sand from a waterlogged *kolt*. "We tried to mix what shouldn't be mixed."
Su Yao knelt beside the soaked remains of Maelis' patchwork, its layers clinging together despite the storm. "Look," she said, lifting a corner where Indian cotton had bonded with coconut fiber. "They're stronger together." Maelis smiled, her eyes brightening. "*Zistwar* (stories) are like that," she said. "The storm didn't destroy them—it tangled them into something new."
Over the next week, they rebuilt with purpose. Instead of a single design, each loom became a "chapter" honoring one culture, while threads from adjacent looms intertwined organically—seaweed-metal fibers looping from a Fijian *masi* to a Bosnian *sevdah* textile, Oromo cow motifs grazing into Cretan labyrinths. Lin treated the metal threads with blends of each culture's traditional conditioners—beeswax from Kenya, argan oil from Tunisia, coconut wax from Seychelles—so they adapted to every fiber.
Fiona worked with each artisan to ensure motifs retained meaning: a Sami reindeer's antlers became part of a Zapotec cornstalk; a Korean *ttukseom* wave merged into a Seychellois coral pattern. "It's not a melting pot," she explained, sketching the connections. "It's a garden—each plant grows in its own soil, but their roots meet underground."
On the hundredth day, they unveiled the tapestry, spread across the lagoon on a floating platform anchored to the reef. In the sunlight, it shimmered like a living thing: 100 cultures, 100 techniques, bound by 100 iterations of the seaweed-metal thread, yet each tradition recognizable, unbroken. The Oromo weavers gasped at how their *shamma* stripes now protected a Kikuyu *uruiru* pattern; the Berbers laughed to see their camels drinking from a Korean seaweed stream.
Maelis draped a small section over Su Yao's shoulders—a fragment containing every culture's thread, stitched into a circle. "This is what happens when we listen," she said, as the tapestry rippled in the breeze, reflecting on the water like a rainbow.
As sunset painted the sky pink, Su Yao's phone buzzed with messages from those who couldn't attend: Amira in Ethiopia, Min-ji in Korea, Tsiry in Madagascar. Each sent a photo of their own weaving, now incorporating threads from the journey. She typed back, "Look what we made together," and attached a photo of the floating tapestry.
The reply came quickly, from Alisi in Fiji: "Is this the end?"
Su Yao smiled, watching children from every culture dance around the tapestry, their shadows merging on the fabric. She typed, "No. It's the first hundred chapters."
Somewhere in the distance, a *lali* drum from Fiji and a *gusle* from Bosnia played the same rhythm. The seaweed-metal threads, tested by desert sand and Arctic ice, by monsoons and cyclones, held strong—not as a replacement for tradition, but as a reminder that all threads, like all people, are stronger when they choose to weave together.