Wow... what a powerful story! Since our current world is already rather dystopian (but in a different way, granted), I normally don't gravitate towards that genre in stories or movies. But, since you (one of my favorite authors on Hive) wrote it, I read it. And I liked it. You concentrated on the holding of things, not the loss of things, and I had a tin of "treasures" of my own as a child (and even have such nowadays, to be perfectly honest). I definitely identified with that girl in the story, and I liked how the story slowly unraveled like the thread of an old sweater to reveal the stitches that comprised the tale. Kudos! ✌️

I don't mind AI-generated/assisted images. They're fine, as long as they are cited as such. But I do not like AI-writing. And yeah, in a "creative writing" group, AI should definitely not be allowed, at least not in the writing part of posts. I'd much rather see a split infinitive or a dangling participle and know it was human-written than to read drivel that, halfway through or so, you stop and realize, "Hey... this crap is AI" 😒