Last updated: 06/04/2026
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Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
The twang of guitar strings is the first thing that greets your senses. A swaying, almost hypnotic tempo waltzed leisurely against your eardrums.
Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
You don’t move. You lay on your side, nested in the grass like a hefty old rock. The outdoor air is crisp and fresh. You can feel each blade bent beneath your slackened weight, surrounding you like a blanket of soft green bristles. You’d been unconscious. . . For how long, you don’t remember. Your head is awash with fog, muffling your thoughts and making it difficult to focus.
Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
Suddenly, a shrill whistle broke out against the swaying chords of the guitar, entangling itself with the stringed thrum as it joined in the waltz of melodic noise. The very sound of it sends a chill up your spine, jolting you awake and forcing your muscles into a stiff shudder. Inhaling sharply, you open your eyes and lift your head out of the grass to have a look around. The land before you was. . . surprising. It takes you a moment to really process the scenery.
The first thing you see - the only thing you can see, is a massive wall of stone so vast and stretching so far in all directions, you couldn’t even begin to dream of finding its ending. The sheer size of it makes your head sway, but you can’t bring yourself to look away from it. You lay there in the grass, struck with awe while you wait for your head to stop spinning. Several chasms hollowed out its flat surface, all of which appeared to be cave entrances. Each entrance sat agape; some of them carried darkness in their maws, offering a twisting path deeper into the earth, while others seemed to open up to sunlit meadows fenced by the tall stone. It seemed you had found yourself in one such meadow, sheltered by the towering land. Roots, vines, flowers, trees, all sorts of vegetation hung from the surface of the wall, lavishly healthy and blooming with natural colors. As you peer through the sunlit chasms, you notice the tangled stone existed even beyond those meadows, like someone had chopped the world’s largest mountain into strips and filled the spaces between with little valleys.
You eventually manage to stop reeling. The whistling-guitar song still traipsed through the air, continuing its lazy waltz. You tear your eyes away from the volume of earth before you and crane your neck towards the source of the song.
A tall, thin person dressed in gray and dark maroon sat with their back against another enormous wall. A rotted guitar sat in their lap, lesioned with mold and old plants that’d taken root in its wooden surface. Still, they strummed away at the strings, whistling an eerie tune to accompany the sound.
Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
Groggily, you sit up to face the stranger fully. You wait in silence, daring not to occupy the air with your own noise while their song still swayed this way and that. You idly observe the stranger a little closer in the meantime.
They sat languorously against the wall, perched upon a mossy rock and slouching over their guitar with one leg crossed over the other. Their face was slightly shadowed by the brim of their gray hat, crowned with a red ribbon and a strange spiral of brown feathers spilling off the side. The color matched their skin. . . er, face? They didn’t seem to have a face of skin, despite their face being humanoid. Instead, their face seemed to be covered with fine fur, like the smooth head of a dog. Faint dark stripes streaked their cheeks and circled their eyes. Their dark hair was streaked with locks of pale cream, contrasting sharply with the shadowy colors that dominated their head. A long, feathery tail stretched out beside them, flaunting similar colors in a dazzling striped pattern.
Their narrowed eyes catch yours. The mysterious look in their gaze made your skin crawl. You somehow knew, if their lips weren’t pursed by the necessity of whistling, they would be smiling at you.
Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
They plucked at their guitar with gloved hands, dull red and taut over their skin. They wore a gray jacket, matching with their hat, over a dark maroon button-up shirt. A cream ruffled collar sat frilled around their neck, complete with a strange button resembling. . . the infinity symbol? Weird. Their lanky legs, clothed with muted red striped pants and tipped with dark heels, bounced slightly with the tempo of their song.
Strum, strum. Strum, strum.
You watch them tensely amidst the soft blades of grass, still as the stones scattered randomly across the meadow. Eventually, the tune of their song slowed like the end of a storm trickling off. The waltz finally slowed, and the swaying of the music finally came to rest.
With one final strum, the stranger fell still. You meet their staring gaze. A smile crept across their face as you kept each other’s eye. Goosebumps creep out of your skin the longer you stare at them.
“Hello,” the stranger said. The sound of their voice almost made you jump out of your skin. “Aren’t you far from home?”
“Well, I sure gathered that much,” you mumble in reply. You glance over your shoulder at the bizarre stone wall, “I’ve never even heard of any place that looks like this. . .”
The stranger chuckled. A low, twisting sound that slithered through your ears.
“Not many have. I’ll admit I would’ve been impressed if you did,” they mused, adjusting their posture against the wall. Their tail lashed like a feathery snake as they shifted their weight.
“What even is this place?” You finally ask the question that’d been gnawing at you since the start.
The stranger’s tail twitched. “You’ve wound yourself up in a very strange place, haven’t you?”
What’s that supposed to mean? The thought bubbled up in your head, though you held your tongue.
The stranger narrowed their eyes. “Goodness, have some patience. It means,” they started sternly, “That you’re not supposed to be here. It shouldn’t be possible to reach this place, and yet here you are sitting in the grass while I play my little songs.”
Alarm spiked up in your chest. What the hell? Could this guy read your thoughts?
“Not quite,” they replied to your pondering once again, “I wouldn’t call it reading, my friend. Not quite hearing, either. . . It’s an awareness. You don’t truly hear the thoughts in your own head, but you know what they mean. It’s similar to that.”
“Um. . .” You’re not sure how to respond. You’re too shocked and confused to really formulate a sentence.
“As I was saying,” the stranger continued regardless of your stammered answer, “You, my friend, have wound up at the edge of infinity.”
“Infinity?” Your eye caught the familiar infinity symbol around the stranger’s neck, “You mean, the number that never ends? I thought that was a math thing.”
The stranger nodded. “You would be correct. Infinity was first conceptualized in mathematics. But this infinity is different. In this place, infinity pertains to distance. Size. Size of navigable land. That is supposed to be infinite, never ending. Yet here you are at the edge of it all.”
You sat there for a moment, staring blankly at the stranger before you. What in the world was this guy on about? This was getting weirder by the second.
“The world isn’t infinite,” you frowned, “That’s not at all how a planet works, guy.”
“When did I ever claim we were on a planet?”
The stranger’s smile widened with amusement at your increasingly perplexed expression. The confusion was so intense, you thought your head might start reeling again.
“You woke up here, did you not?”
You nod hesitantly.
“Do you recall where you were before you woke up here?”
“I was. . . at home,” you recalled. Memories of being embraced by your bed sheets flickered briefly through your mind. “I was trying to fall asleep, I think. . .”
“Hm. And you fell asleep,” The stranger smiled.
Fell asleep. . . Fell asleep!
“Am I dreaming? This is a dream, it must be!”
The stranger simply chuckled, the sound of it once again plucking up goosebumps from your skin.
“Dreams work much differently than the rational world you are used to, I’m sure you know. But there are still some things that should be impossible, like finding the edge of infinity.”
You cast a glance around the area again, seeking a double take. This was a dream? It felt so real. So vivid. You don’t think you’ve ever had a dream this lifelike before.
“I still see more land behind you,” you observe. The stranger was leaning on it, after all. “What’s all that, if this is the ‘edge of infinity’ or whatever?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I will advise you, however, not to attempt to see for yourself.”
“Why? What’s gonna happen?”
The stranger shrugged, and their smile fell. Their tone was uncannily calm for the matter at hand, “Everything and nothing all at once. I couldn’t describe it to you, my friend. But you should be aware that by exploring past the end of infinity, the one thing that is supposed to never end, you are breaking an imperative rule of the world itself. And for that, there will be calamitous consequences.”
A pit of dread opened in your stomach from the stranger’s tone. Even though this was a dream, you could easily imagine it turning into a nightmare if what the stranger said was true.
“. . .Ah. Alright then, I think I’ll stay here.”
“A wise choice,” the stranger replied simply. They plucked idly at the strings of their guitar.
“. . .Who are you?” You asked, “What’s your name? What are you. . . doing here?”
The stranger’s smile returned, and they stopped plucking at their guitar. “Fargo Fargone. Just Fargo would be alright, too. I’m here to keep drifters like you from wandering off the edge. It’s rare for anyone to come here, so I’m often all by my lonesome. Usually it’s just me and my songs. . . It’s nice to finally have someone to sit and sing with for a while”
A pang of sympathy struck your heart. This guy. . . Fargo, they said? Sounded like they had the loneliest lifestyle in the history of time. From what they said earlier, people weren’t supposed to end up out here. It must be terribly lonely waiting for exceptions like you to wind up here.
Fargo eyed you for a moment longer, tilting their head.
“Do you have a favorite song to sing to pass the time, my friend?”
“Uh. . . A couple,” you shrugged. You weren’t a huge music-maniac, but you definitely knew a few. You figure it wouldn’t hurt to entertain Fargo a little longer, especially considering how lonely they must be.
Fargo beamed. It was the first time they smiled that didn’t send a chill up your spine. Perhaps you made the right choice.
“How do they go?”
Writer's Note
This is the song that inspired this sequence, as well as the song Fargo was playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGMGJNi88EU
Their whistling takes the place of the trumpet :)