"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 61"
The mist rolled over the heather-covered moors of the Scottish Highlands, where stone cottages huddled against the wind and sheep grazed on slopes dotted with gorse. Su Yao's car navigated narrow roads bordered by drystone walls, passing women in tweed skirts carrying baskets of peat, until it reached a croft village nestled between two lochs. In a barn converted into a weaving studio, a group of weavers sat at wooden looms, their hands moving in rhythm with the clacking of shuttles. Their leader, a woman with a red woolen shawl and a face weathered by Highland storms named Morag, looked up as they approached, holding a length of tweed—rich browns and greens woven into a pattern of interlocking crosses and stripes. "Ye've come for the tweed," she said, her Gaelic lilt thick as the mist, gesturing to bolts of the fabric stacked beside a peat fire.
The Celtic people of the Highlands have woven tweed for over 300 years, a craft tied to clan identity and survival in harsh conditions. The word "tweed" derives from the Scottish Gaelic "tùdail," meaning "a piece of cloth," and each clan's tweed features unique patterns—sett—that serve as a visual signature: the MacLeods' bold red stripes, the Campbells' forest greens, the Mackenzies' navy blues. Woven from wool shorn from hardy Highland sheep, which graze on heather and gorse, tweed is waterproof and wind-resistant, perfect for the unpredictable climate. Dyes are made from plants and lichens found on the moors: heather for purple, gorse for yellow, and peat for dark brown, with recipes guarded as fiercely as clan secrets. The weaving process includes offerings of whisky to the "wee folk" (fairies) to ensure good luck, and weavers sing waulking songs while stretching the cloth—a tradition that dates to medieval times. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this rugged craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Highland traditions while adding durability to the wool fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "clan pride" and "innovation" was as different as the misty moors and the stormy North Sea.
Morag's granddaughter, Eilidh, a 28-year-old who ran a tweed workshop while studying Scottish history, held up a tweed jacket with a pattern of thistles and lions. "This is for the Burns Supper," she said, tracing the motifs that honor Scotland's national poet. "Ma gran wove it during the Samhain (Halloween) when the veil between worlds is thin—too many thistles, and it brings bad luck; too few, and the clan's spirit fades. Ye dinna just make tweed—ye weave the clan's soul into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought automated looms and synthetic wool blends, intending to mass-produce simplified tweed patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "heritage luxury" fashion line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven clan motifs, the weavers fell silent, their shuttles hanging motionless. Morag's brother, Angus, a 72-year-old shepherd with a beard like gorse and a walking stick carved from oak, stood and glowered. "Ye think machines can capture the spiorad (spirit) of our ancestors?" he said, his voice rough as gravel. "Tweed carries the sweat of our shepherds and the blood of our warriors. Yer metal has no sweat, no blood—it's a rock, no' a clan badge."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Highland weavers shear sheep by hand during the Lammas (harvest festival), singing to the animals to "give their warmth freely" and leaving a portion of the wool as an offering to the earth. The wool is washed in loch water, which is said to "strengthen the fibers like a warrior's resolve," and carded using wooden tools passed down through families. Dyes are prepared in cast-iron pots over peat fires, with each batch stirred counterclockwise to "ward off evil spirits," and the recipes are taught only to blood relatives. The seaweed-metal blend, despite its oceanic origins, was viewed as an outsider. "Yer thread comes from the salt sea, which erodes our cliffs," Morag said, dropping the sample into a bucket of peat water. "It'll never carry the clan's honor."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the heather dye, turning it a murky gray and causing the wool fibers to mat. "It angers the ancestors," Eilidh said, holding up a ruined swatch where the thistle pattern had blurred. "Our tweed grows softer with each storm, like a well-worn sporran. This'll scratch like granite, destroying the clan's name."
Then disaster struck: relentless rains flooded the village, washing away the peat bogs used for dyeing and damaging the weavers' looms—some of which had been in use since the 1800s. The stored wool, kept in a stone warehouse, was soaked and mildewed, and the clan's ancient sett patterns—recorded in a leather-bound book—were nearly destroyed. With the Highland Games approaching, when new tweed is worn with pride, the community faced a cultural crisis. Angus, performing a ritual to calm the storm gods by burning heather and reciting Gaelic prayers, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "Ye brought somethin' foreign to our land," he muttered, as smoke curled toward the leaden sky. "Now the earth is angry, and it takes back our heritage."
That night, Su Yao sat with Morag in her croft house, where a peat fire crackled in the hearth and a pot of cullen skink (smoked haddock soup) simmered, filling the air with the scent of smoke and seafood. The walls were hung with tweed garments and clan tartans, and a small shrine held a family Bible and a silver quaich (drinking cup) for whisky offerings. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping whisky neat as the Highland custom dictates. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Morag smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of shortbread. "The floods are no' yer fault," she said. "The Highlands have always fought with water—that's how the lochs were made. Ma gran used to say that even wet wool can be dried, like a drowned story can be retold. But yer thread—maybe it's a chance to show that tweed can change, without losing its clan heart. The young folk leave for the cities. We need to show them their heritage is alive, no' just in museums."
Su Yao nodded, hope flickering like the peat fire. "What if we start over? We'll help drain the wool warehouse, repair the looms, and gather new dye plants from higher ground. We'll learn to weave tweed by hand, using your waulking songs. We won't copy your clan setts. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your thistles with our ocean waves, honoring both your moors and the sea. And we'll let Angus bless the metal thread with a whisky offering, so it carries the clan's favor."
Eilidh, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her tweed skirt rustling. "Ye'd really learn to sing the waulking songs while stretching the cloth? It takes years to master the rhythm—yer hands will blister, yer voice will grow hoarse."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the Gaelic prayers you say over the looms. Respect means joining your clan."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Highland life. They helped build stone drains to protect the wool warehouse from future floods, their muscles aching from lifting rocks, and trekked with Angus to collect heather and gorse from higher moors, learning to read the weather in the movement of the mist. They sat at the looms from dawn until dusk, their fingers raw from handling wool, as the women sang waulking songs about love and loss on the battlefield. "The tweed must be stretched with the same rhythm as the song," Morag said, showing Su Yao how to pull the cloth. "Too hard, and it shrinks; too soft, and it loses its weatherproofing. Like life in the Highlands—ye must be tough but gentle."
They learned to dye the wool in cast-iron pots over peat fires, their clothes stained purple and brown as Eilidh taught them to add a drop of whisky to the heather dye to "make the color last like a clan's memory." "Ye have to pick the heather at dawn when the dew is on it," she said, crushing the flowers into a paste. "It holds the moor's spirit—rush it, and ye get only gray." They practiced the twill weave that gives tweed its signature diagonal pattern, their progress slow but steady as Morag's 85-year-old mother, Flora, who remembered the last clan gatherings before the war, corrected their tension with a sharp eye. "The sett must be perfect, like the lines of a clan's territory," she said, her gnarled fingers brushing the fabric. "A lopsided pattern brings shame to the name."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and heather dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of beeswax and peat tar, a mixture Highlanders use to waterproof boots. The wax sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the tar added a subtle earthy scent that Angus declared "smells like the moors." "It's like giving the thread a Highland soul," she said, showing Morag a swatch where the purple now glowed against the metal's shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way the Highlands' rivers flow to the North Sea, designed a new pattern called "Moor to Main," merging Celtic thistles with wave motifs in seaweed-metal thread. The thistles gradually transform into waves, symbolizing the connection between the land and sea that has shaped Highland life for centuries. "It honors your clan and our ocean," she said, and Angus nodded, running his hand over the design as if feeling the history in it. "The sea and the moor have always fed us," he said. "This cloth tells their shared story."
As the sun finally broke through the mist and the looms clacked again, the community held a ceilidh (celebration) to mark the completion of their first collaborative tweed. With fiddles playing and dancers spinning, they unveiled a tweed jacket with the "Moor to Main" pattern, its wool fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on water, and traditional clan stripes that glowed against the heather purple.
Morag draped the jacket over Su Yao's shoulders, as the weavers sang a waulking song in Gaelic. "This cloth has two hearts," she said, her eyes shining with pride. "One from our Highlands, one from yer sea. But both beat with the same courage."
As the team's car drove away from the croft, Eilidh ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of tweed dyed purple, stitched with a tiny thistle and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a heather sprig. "To remember us by," read a note in Gaelic and English. "Remember that moor and sea are both Scotland's blood—like yer thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Highlands faded into the distance, their peaks wreathed in mist. She thought of the hours spent weaving by peat fire light, the waulking songs sung in harmony, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the wool. The Highlanders had taught her that tradition isn't about being stuck in the past—it's about carrying the clan's spirit forward, letting it evolve while keeping its roots deep in the land.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Dai team: photos of Linh holding their collaborative pha tha banner at a temple festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new thistle—Scottish Highlands and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a bagpipe played a haunting melody that echoed across the moors, a reminder of the resilience that binds all cultures. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless clans to honor, countless stories to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—respecting the land, honoring the clan—the tapestry would only grow more rich, a testament to the beauty of heritage woven into every thread.