Spooktober Stories: Essence Sweetmoss

When Essence first met Ava, it was cute that they couldn't understand one another. It was Essence's first time leaving Zenxon, and she'd never leared Shugbo. Ava, of course, didn't know Roex. What human did? They transformed into each other's pillow dictionaries.
They met in the cafeteria after classes and would study in two languages--Ava stumbling through an ancient tongue and Essence deftly handling the common one. That was, until Ava began to get frustrated with how much quicker her partner learned. Sometimes, it is difficult dating a sprite.
"Ugh, I wish I could learn like you do. How are you so good already?" Ava said one day after tripping over her own tongue.
Essence, feeling guilty, answered, "well, you don't have to learn Roex anymore. I can speak Shugbo, so we can just..." She stopped as she saw the pain in Ava's eyes. She tried to backpeddle--to explain that she wasn't offended by Ava's slow learning, or bothered by it. She just... didn't want to make things difficult for her."
But language is supposed to be difficult," Ava said, and then after a moment's thought, "relationships too." And Essence knew then that was the end of it. She run up against a wall--some sort of complexity only human eyes could see.