Title: Five Times Maglor Tried to Teach His Brothers About Phones
Fandom: The Silmarillion
Rating: K
Length: 1,007 words
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: N/A
Summary: ...and one time he didn't need to.



1. Maedhros

“Now, if you’ll look at the screen, you see those letters? You press them to form words and then you can send-” Maglor cut himself off as he looked at his screen, which now showed a text message from his brother.

Unfortunately, the message was Gijaioarn aijiono.

Maedhros was now bright red as he avoided looking at his brother.

Maglor cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should put off text messaging until we’ve acquired a phone better suited to your size, brother.”

Maedhros just nodded, and then walked away, causing Maglor to sigh.


2. Celegorm

Maglor had thought that teaching his other brothers to use the phone would be much simpler.

“Why is there an arrow sticking out of the screen of your phone?” he said. He took a deep breath as he watched his brother shrug.

“Because I thought it would be fun?”

He took another deep breath. “You – no – no, that’s not fun at all. Do you know how much that cost? Do you know how much explaining it’s going to take for me to get you a new phone, because you shot it with an arrow? Just go inside. Go inside, with Maedhros, and tell him that you need to be watched because you are abusing the hospitality of our hosts – and don’t give me that look, you’re lucky that Celeborn didn’t dump us all on the streets when Námo showed up and told me that I’d be responsible for watching my brothers in the middle of the 21st century, and instead offered to let us stay with him so he could help me with you lot!”

Maglor’s voice steadily rose us he ranted, until Celegorm took off running for the door and shut it behind him.

So maybe he wasn’t an utter idiot. Just the elf that was going to give Maglor a stroke.

He ignored Celeborn’s laughter behind him.


3. Curufin

“I thought you would be more reasonable than Celegorm. I really, really thought you would.” Maglor paced back and forth across the room. “Instead, you for some reason decided to try and place a miniature palantír in your phone in order to ‘improve communication’.”

“Of course I did. Why would I continue to use human technology, when I could use our own father’s far more advanced form of communication?” Curufin said.

“One, you know that half of us are convinced that we’re the same species as humans, right? Secondly, the palantíri were wonderful for the first few ages of the world. Now, we’ve moved on to forms of long distance communication that don’t have to be placed in an exact triangulation with the other in order to communicate! Lastly, where did you even find the materials to build a miniature palantír?” Maglor shoved his hands through his hair.

“Ebay.” Curufin smirked.

“How did you even – you learned how to use the internet, but the lot of you can’t even use cellphones properly? I suppose I should just be glad you didn’t try to trade Fingon for them on Craigslist.”

“Don’t be silly,” Curufin replied. “We traded him for Celegorm’s new motorcycle.”


4. Amrod

Later, Maglor had calmed Maedhros down, rescued Celegorm and Curufin from the cave Maedhros had chased them to, and found Fingon to bring him back to the house. Then he managed to find Amrod up in a tree.

“I’m assuming you’re not even bothered to try and learn how to use your phone?”

Amrod shrugged. “Why would I? If I need anything, it’s much simpler to have Curufin find it online.”

“Curufin’s not allowed to access the internet without supervision for the rest of this year,” Maglor snapped.

Amrod shrugged again. “The cute lady next door will order it for me. Did you know that her dog likes the taste of lettuce?”

Maglor opened his mouth and paused. “You know what? I don’t care anymore. You do what you want.”


5. Amras

“I’m not going to learn how to use that thing,” Amrod said. “Curufin told me all about phone fires.”

“Phone fires?” Maglor groaned. “Amrod, there is no danger of having your phone catch on fire next to your ear and light you on fire again.”

Amrod shook his head. “Don’t care, not learning about it.”

“Fine. Fine. I give up on teaching you to use your phone. Now will you please stop swinging that fire extinguisher around?”

“It’s my pet. I named it Dummy.”

“You named the fire extinguisher Dummy– did you all watch movies again?” Maglor felt the urge to bang his head into the wall.

“Yes,” Amras shifted away from Maglor. “Curufin said he was going to build us all robots, because he was clearly smarter than the scruffy mortal.”

“Scruffy mor- damn it!” Maglor took off running for the basement.

Of course Curufin would want to outdo a fictional character.


Plus Caranthir

“Our brothers giving you problems?” Caranthir glanced up at Maglor, who sank into a chair and seemed ready to give up on life.

“I give up on teaching any of you to use phones. You all get to exist in the modern world with historical forms of communication, though I doubt they’ll even know how to send a letter,” Maglor said, burying his head in his hands.

“None of them read the instruction manual?” Caranthir asked.

“No – wait, did you?” Maglor lifted his head to look at where his brother was fiddling on his phone.

“Of course I did. Did you know that you can order pizza on this thing? It’s vastly preferable to having to eat whatever Celegorm manages to cook up, or the twins. Curufin isn’t allowed into the kitchen because he keeps trying to improve things, and Maedhros can’t use the oven because he’s too tall and falls over the open door while he’s trying to get things out. Oh, and you’ll have to check on his burns in the morning, because I absolutely refuse to play nurse for him if I don’t have,” Caranthir said as he concentrated on his phone.

Maglor just stared in disbelief.