"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 56"
The Andes Mountains rose like jagged giants against the sky, their peaks dusted with snow even in summer, as Su Yao's vehicle climbed a winding dirt road. Below, valleys stretched in a patchwork of terraced fields and small villages with adobe houses, where Quechua women in layered skirts and colorful hats herded llamas and alpacas. Near the town of Cusco, in a sunlit courtyard surrounded by stone walls, a group of weavers sat on woolen blankets, their hands moving with practiced speed over backstrap looms. Their leader, a woman with braids wrapped in red yarn and a geometric-patterned poncho draped over her shoulders named Mama Lucia, looked up as they approached, holding a finished garment dyed in deep blues, burnt oranges, and earthy browns. "You've come for the poncho," she said, her Quechua language rolling like the mountain streams, gesturing to the piles of textiles folded neatly nearby.
The Quechua people of the Andes have woven ponchos for over a millennium, a craft rooted in Inca traditions and spiritual beliefs. The poncho—a rectangular garment with a slit for the head—serves as protection against the harsh mountain climate, a symbol of community, and a living record of history: patterns depict Inca myths, agricultural cycles, and celestial events. Woven from ultra-soft alpaca wool, which is warmer than sheep's wool and naturally water-resistant, each poncho requires up to three months of work. Dyes are made from plants and minerals gathered in the mountains: cochineal insects for red, mollusk shells for purple, and quinoa leaves for green, with each color carrying sacred meaning—blue for the sky god Inti, gold for the sun, and black for the underworld. The dyeing process includes offerings to Pachamama (Mother Earth) to ensure bountiful harvests, and weavers chant prayers to the ancestors while working. 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 heritage while adding durability to the delicate alpaca fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "tradition" and "innovation" was as different as the mountain's thin air and the ocean's thick humidity.
Mama Lucia's granddaughter, Sofia, a 24-year-old who studied textile design in Cusco while helping with the family weaving business, held up a poncho with a pattern of condors and snakes intertwined. "This tells the story of Viracocha, the creator god," she said, tracing the symbols that Quechua children learn to read before they can write. "My grandmother wove it for the Inti Raymi (sun festival) when the days start to lengthen. Each stitch is placed according to the position of the stars—too high, and the condor can't fly; too low, and the snake loses its power. You don't just weave a poncho—you map the cosmos."
Su Yao's team had brought industrial looms and synthetic alpaca blends, intending to mass-produce simplified poncho patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Andean luxury" collection. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven condor motifs, the weavers fell silent, their wooden shuttles hovering mid-air. Mama Lucia's husband, Tata Juan, an elder with a weathered face and a staff carved with Inca symbols, stood and shook his head slowly. "You think machines can capture the soul of the alpaca?" he said, his voice gravelly from years of mountain air. "Ponchos carry the breath of our animals and the wisdom of our ancestors. Your metal has no breath, no wisdom—it is a stone from the valley, not the mountain."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Quechua weavers shear alpacas by hand during the full moon, when the wool is said to hold the most warmth, and sing to the animals to "give their fleece freely." The wool is cleaned in glacial streams, where women leave coca leaves as offerings to Pachamama, and spun into thread during the cold winter months, when the dry air prevents static. Dyes are prepared in clay pots over fires made from sacred q'olle wood, with each batch stirred 13 times (a sacred number in Inca cosmology) to "align with the universe's rhythm." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from the salt sea, which Pachamama did not place in our mountains," Mama Lucia said, setting the sample on the ground as if it were unclean. "It will never protect our children from the frost."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the cochineal dye, turning it a sickly pink and causing the alpaca fibers to mat. "It angers the ancestors," Sofia said, holding up a ruined swatch where the condor's wings had blurred. "Our ponchos grow softer with each Inti Raymi, like a relationship with Pachamama. This will scratch and pill, like a curse."
Then disaster struck: unusual spring snowstorms blanketed the high pastures, killing young alpacas and leaving the surviving adults thin, their wool sparse and coarse. The stored wool, kept in a stone hut, was damaged by moisture seeping through the walls, and the dye plants—growing in carefully tended plots—were buried under ice. With the harvest festival approaching, when new ponchos are worn to honor Pachamama, the community faced both spiritual and economic hardship. Tata Juan, performing a ritual to appease the mountain spirits by burning coca leaves and pouring chicha (corn beer) on the ground, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something from the lowlands to our high peaks," he chanted, as smoke curled toward the snow-capped mountains. "Now the gods are angry, and they withhold their gifts."
That night, Su Yao sat with Mama Lucia in her stone house, where a fire crackled in a corner hearth and a pot of locro (potato stew) simmered, filling the air with the scent of cumin and aji peppers. The walls were hung with ponchos worn by generations, each telling a story of weddings, harvests, and hardships, and a small altar held coca leaves, a candle, and a stone from Machu Picchu. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping mate de coca (coca tea) to ease the altitude sickness. "We came here thinking we could celebrate your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Mama Lucia smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of pisco sour candy. "The snow is not your fault," she said. "The mountains have always tested us—this is how we grow strong. My grandmother used to say that even broken threads can be woven into something beautiful, like the patchwork of our valleys. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that our ponchos can adapt, without losing their story. The young people leave for the cities. We need to show them our weaving is not just history—it's alive."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like puya raimondi flowers after the snow melts. "What if we start over? We'll help care for the surviving alpacas, build shelters to protect them from storms, and replant the dye plants. We'll learn to weave ponchos on backstrap looms, by hand. 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 Tata Juan bless the metal thread with a pago a la tierra (offering to the earth), so it carries Pachamama's favor."
Sofia, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her layered skirts rustling. "You'd really learn to spin alpaca wool at this altitude? Your hands will tire quickly, and the thread breaks easily if you're not used to it."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the ancestor chants while we work. Respect means speaking their language."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Quechua life. They helped build stone shelters for the alpacas, their muscles aching from lifting heavy rocks, and trekked with Tata Juan to high-altitude meadows to collect new dye plants, learning to read the mountain weather and avoid dangerous passes. They sat cross-legged in the courtyard, spinning wool until their fingers were raw, as the women sang huaynos (folk songs) about lost loves and mountain beauty. "The wool must be spun with the rhythm of the wind," Mama Lucia said, adjusting Su Yao's spindle. "Too tight, and it loses its warmth; too loose, and the weave sags. Like life in the mountains—you must bend, but never break."
They learned to dye fibers in clay pots over open fires, their clothes stained red and purple as Sofia taught them to add q'olle ash to the cochineal dye to "fix the color like a memory." "You have to gather the cochineal at dawn when the dew is heavy," she said, grinding the insects into a paste. "They're sacred—we ask their permission before taking them, and leave some to multiply." They practiced the tapestry weave that creates the intricate patterns, their progress slow but steady as Mama Lucia's mother, a 90-year-old weaver named Mama Rosa who remembered stories from her grandmother about Inca times, corrected their tension with a gentle touch. "The condor's wings must be strong enough to carry messages to Inti," she said, her gnarled fingers brushing the fabric. "But light enough to fly."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and cochineal dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of alpaca fat and q'olle resin, a mixture Quechua use to waterproof leather sandals. The fat sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the resin added a subtle fragrance that Tata Juan declared "pleasing to Pachamama." "It's like giving the thread an Andean soul," she said, showing Mama Lucia a swatch where the red now glowed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Andean rivers flow to the Amazon and eventually the Atlantic, designed a new pattern called mountain to sea, merging Quechua condor motifs with wave shapes in seaweed-metal thread. The condors soar above waves that gradually rise from the bottom of the poncho, symbolizing the connection between the highest peaks and the deepest oceans. "It honors your mountains and our sea," she said, and Tata Juan nodded, running his hand over the design as if feeling the energy in it. "Pachamama made both earth and water," he said. "This cloth speaks the truth of that."
As the alpacas regained their strength and the new dye plants began to grow, the community held a fiesta to celebrate the first shearing of the season, with traditional dances, music, and a feast of cuy (guinea pig) and pisco. They unveiled their first collaborative piece: a poncho with the mountain to sea pattern, its alpaca fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the sunlight like snow on peaks, and traditional Inca geometric borders that glowed against the natural wool.
Mama Lucia draped the poncho over Su Yao's shoulders during the celebration, as villagers played pan flutes and danced the huayno. "This cloth has two spirits," she said, her eyes shining. "One from our Andes, one from your sea. But both are children of Pachamama."
As the team's vehicle descended the mountain, Sofia ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of alpaca wool dyed red, stitched with a tiny condor and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a coca leaf. "To remember us by," read a note in Quechua and Spanish. "Remember that the mountains and sea are connected—like your thread and our alpaca 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 spinning wool by the fire, the huaynos sung under the stars, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the alpaca fibers. The Quechua had taught her that tradition isn't about preserving the past in amber—it's about carrying wisdom forward, letting it evolve while keeping its heart intact.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Zapotec team: photos of Lupita holding their collaborative rebozo at a village festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new pattern—Andean peaks and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a pan flute played a haunting melody that seemed to drift on the mountain winds, a reminder of the ancient connections that bind all people to the earth. 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 humility—listening to the land, honoring those who tended it—the tapestry would only grow more magnificent, a testament to the beauty of human creativity rooted in respect.