Little drop of gold falls like a tear, but sounds like nail pounding into a coffin. It's the sound of brass hitting the bottom of the motel's dirty metal trashcan. All it takes is the brief unclenching of a muscle; a breathless second of release, and his hand drops the amulet. Not dropping, he lets it fall. Forces beyond his control send the amulet away and he slams the door on faith and God and love.
An underpaid motel maid robotically lifts and sends the contents of the can tumbling into her trash bag when a glint of gold catches her eye. Full of daring, she plunges her hand down into the depths of bag and shifts the filth until she sees it again. Little drop of gold. She smiles as she pulls it out; something about the strange little amulet pleases her.
The motel maid goes home feeling brittle and too old for her young bones. She lives with her grandmother, the woman who basically raised her while her parents struggled to find work. Her grandmother is shriveled and looks like an emaciated walnut on a good day, but she brags to every man who so much as opens a door for her about her famed beauty and sexual prowess. The maid finds her embarrassing, but when her grandmother stops preening and spends long evenings sitting quietly in bed, she realizes how much she loved the woman. So that night when she gets home she presses the freshly washed amulet into her grandmother's hand and tells her that she's her favorite person in the universe. The old woman smiles and her eyes sparkle. Like little drops of gold.
The old woman goes to bed a few nights later and doesn't wake up. She dies in the hospital a few hours later. The motel maid sells everything in the estate sale, quits her job, and bitterly leaves the amulet to the estate sale.
When they sell off all the memories and fragments of a long life, a young boy, no older than five or six, drags his sister in to shift through the piles of debris. She stands patiently looking through the CDs and books; while he bounces from place to place and brings her little trinkets and campy knickknacks he's taken a liking to. She pays for them all, dull and worthless as they are, but when they are walking home, he pulls something out of his pocket. It glints in the sun. Like a little drop of gold.
He presses the amulet shyly into her hand and thanks her for taking him. He spent his weeks allowance on the little necklace and his face lights up when she puts it on. She feels strong with the amulet around her neck, bumping against her breast like a beating heart. Her brother gambols ahead of her, delighted at the cleverness of his present.
She keeps the amulet near for the next month, sleeping with it curled in her fist, imagining she can feeling it pulsing and pumping love straight from its little golden face. It shines around her neck in the daytime, like the gleam in her little brother's eye.
One fine summer morning the little boy goes racing out into the field behind their house. He brushes past a tree a little swarm of bees cover his arms in little red welts. His throat closes and by the time her parents rush him to the hospital his heart has stopped and he is declared brain dead.
His sister cannot wear the bright drop of gold against her black dress. It bumps too hard against her chest now, leaving nothing but a little red welt.
She gives the necklace to one of her brother's friends, a girl he met at camp, who lives a few states over now but still makes it to the funeral.
The little girl thinks the necklace is funny looking, not like the pretty things she owns with sparkles and gems. But she keeps it in her box of treasures because she can tell that it is important. She understands that the necklace means something big, and she needs to collect a little trove of meaning in her life.
When they get back to their house, her dad is having one of his bad times. He yells and mom yells and threatens to leave and she takes the little girl off to her sister's for the weekend. When they get back her dad looks washed out, thin and grey like faded paint. He is quiet and apologetic for a week, shuffling around the house, taking his pills again. Her mother gets headaches and fusses and starts getting out her pamphlets. The little girl watches her dad nod and listen and stare vacantly into space. She goes up to her room and spreads out all of her pretty bright treasures and touches them all with a smile. The amulet catches her eye, shining the brightest through the gloom of her house and she suddenly understands its purpose. A little drop of gold on faded paint.
She goes downstairs that night, past her bedtime, and finds her dad crying at the kitchen table, undignified high-pitched sobs. She slides up next to him, light as a kitten on her feet, and wraps her arms around him. She puts the necklace over his head and he sniffles as he looks at it. Then he cries harder and kisses her on the top of her head and calls her a good girl, a little angel.
He loses the necklace at a bar that weekend. He comes home the next morning with a split lip and a huge purple knot on his forehead. Her mother yells again and makes some calls, but the little girl thinks that at least her dad has found colors again.
The man who beat her father halfway to hell takes the amulet on a whim. He's a drifter, a failure, and a first class scumbag. He drives down south where he's staying with a girl until he gets restless again. Before he goes back to her, he stops in another bar somewhere in Arkansas.
A woman sits at the bar with a beer, lonely and terrified of not being lonely. The drifter catches her eye. His lip curls in a smile, but she looks away. He slouches down next to her, aching to fill that emptiness in her heart and his for at least a night. He buys her another round, brushing her fingers as he hands her the cool brown bottle. She gets up to leave once she drinks it down, shying away from his touch and squirming under his glance.
He catches her arm and her heart jumps with fear. But all he does is slip a something into her palm, a necklace like a little drop of gold. He whispers that a pretty lady should wear something just as pretty. She slips the necklace over her head and finally meets his cool brown gaze.
In a moment of boldness that the amulet glinting at her cleavage seems to bolster, she smiles coyly at the drifter, plants a succulent kiss on his scruffy cheek, and whispers a husky thanks. She sidles out of the bar and lets her finger run over the smooth metal of the amulet, glowing with warmth.
Her best friend is moving out to New York with his new husband next year and as she helps him load the last box into the back of his truck, she finds herself pressing the amulet into his hands, desperate to leave him with some tangible connection to her. He looks somewhat puzzled by the off the beaten track gift, but he slips the cord over his head before they drive off. She glimpses it through the window as they pull away, barely more than a little drop of gold.
The friend expects her to call. Even though he's living half the country away, he expects her to manage a phone call. She plans to call, but fear of picking up the phone and hearing a stranger with her friends voice keeps the line silent. The friend stops wearing the amulet after a few weeks of barely more than a text message. His husband frets a little, but soon forgets it as the amulet is lost in piles of unpacked boxes.
Patience keeps their friendship going for a few months, but the friend grows resentful of the woman and that resent grows into a cold indifference. He loses himself in the flood of new faces, names to learn, and stories to hear. He only finds the amulet again when it tumbles out of a tangled bunch of old decorations he dumps out at Christmas time. The other ornaments glisten like jewels, but the amulet is coated with dust.
He takes it to a pawnshop the next day with a few other trinkets, makes some spare cash, and never looks back. But when he calls his friend the next day and gets only an answering machine he wishes he had the little amulet to clutch again. When he goes back to the shop, it's gone. His vision blurs as he walks home and his eyes are bright as jewels.
An old woman buys the amulet and several other bits and pieces with the money she just stole from a man on the subway. She's been around long enough to know the worth of something so small and strange, like a little drop of gold. The old woman deals in strange charms and pendants that few find more than aesthetic value in, but a string of unruly misfits filter into her shop each year and snatch up the things she has collected to keep back the darkness for a little longer.
Her little shop is like a magpie's nest, glittering and cramped. The eclectic collection is spewed over several tables. Hunters stomp in a few times a week, or call to request items, but every once in a while a tourist stumbles in. The old woman guides them to tables full of objects whose worth cannot be calculated, then plies them with overpriced trash of unknown worth.
When a tourist meanders in on a rainy Friday morning, the old woman gives a brilliant white smile. The tourist asks about some of the more exotic items, evidently anxious about something. He mentions strange noises in his room, feelings of freezing cold, and flickering lights. He doesn't understand, but he wants something to protect him. The old woman takes pity on the man and phones an old friend of hers who's been in town. The tourist pokes through piles of glittering amulets with unknown or irrelevant uses. Eventually he buys a small golden amulet, a little faced carved in bronze. The old woman doesn't know what it does, but she hopes it will help.
The tourist leaves the shop, light spilling in as the door swings shut, brilliant white.
The grizzled man saves the tourists life when he bursts into the old hotel room brandishing an iron poker. Before he leaves town, the tourist gives him a little golden amulet as a token of gratitude. The hunter tucks it away with the other strange things he has acquired after years on the job. He can't help but feel a little lighter as he drives out of town, the symbols of lives saved in a little box on the passenger seat.
Something with too many teeth and too many eyes gets him by the end of the year and his niece finds the box of trinkets in his car, spilling them into her trunk like a shower of gold, as little drops run down her face.
The amulet changes hands as hunters live and die, passing it on to protect the ones they love until one day a man buys the box that holds the amulet in exchange for a little cash and some information. He's looking for an unrelated charm that caught his eye on the top of the box, but figures that the rest will make a good deal. The man doesn't sift through the contents of the box right there in the backwoods bar; he slouches out to the car where his brother is waiting. The parking lot is covered in ice and the man hunches his shoulders against the December chill.
Ducking to avoid scraping his head, the man climbs into the passenger seat. He tosses the box at his brother who, immersed in a bacon cheeseburger, only grunts his approval and tosses the box into the back. The car pulls away.
The little amulet sits at the bottom of the box, undiscovered, but reunited in the way that counts.
The motel maid falls in love for the first time that year. The sister wakes with a smile after a beautiful dream. The little girl visits her dad in his new home and brings him a bouquet of flowers. The drifter finds a stray dog in a parking lot and after one shared sausage has a best friend. The woman calls her friend in New York and the friend answers. The old woman falls on the stairs and grateful outcasts from all over the country gather in her hospital room to wish her well. The hunter's niece kills the monster that tore him to pieces. Sam and Dean spend Christmas together, like the old days.
Hope never really dies when given with love. There's always a spark left. Just a little twinkle. Like a little drop of gold.