Descent Into Madness by Catherine Woods-Field

we part as friends? Or as two who had been lovers but are no more?
                  If he left, would I ever again behold his face? Did I have time to memorize every line, every imperfection? A week without him, I could endure. But eternity… I was not so sure.
                  Then a whisper came forth from the mouth of the cave and it startled me from my silent musing. "Bree?" he whispered into the night air. I was apprehensive, hesitating on my branch. "Bree!" he called louder. I slowly glided down from the branch, landing softly in front of him. He stood not two feet in front of me, yet his mind was miles away.
                  "Let us talk." He took my hand and guided me toward a rock slab, but I refused to sit with him.
                  "What is it, Aksel?" I asked, snatching my hand from his grasp and stepping away from him. I turned to glance out over the brook, not wanting to see his face.
                  "I...I am returning to Norway."
                  "Without me?"
                  "With or without you; I am going home." He slumped forward; his elbows pressed firmly against his knees and his heels digging furiously into the dirt. "I am done with this life: city-to-city, living a farce! I cannot do it anymore."
                  "Then you will be going without me."
                  "Is there no way I can convince you to come with me?" he asked as he rose from the slab and walked toward me.
                  "No." I turned to him. "Is there no way I can convince you to stay?” I struggled to form the words, to shout, “Nothing but danger greets you there. Nothing but death!”
                  I wanted to tell him that if he left my heart would break into a million pieces and would never mend, but I knew this was not true. I knew it was in our nature, a natural progression that forever did not exist with our kind.               Mortal marriage has its natural expiration and so did ours. With time, we gravitate away from each other, both having morphed into completely different creatures than which we were when we were human. With Aksel, he had changed completely from when I turned him. He was full of melancholy - prone to fits, and would go off on his own. Just not the man I had known sixty-one years ago. 
                  "Bree, if I do not go now, I will only grow to resent you more." His voice pulled me out of the fog of my own thoughts.
                  "Then you do resent me?" Facing him, I could see the turmoil in his blood-shot eyes.
                  "I resent leaving… not you," he stammered.
                  "But it was my decision to leave, Aksel! You followed. Have you held it against me all these years?"
                  He tried embracing me, but I pushed him away. He tried to grab my arm, but I jerked back.
                  "You do resent me, admit it. At least be a man and admit it!" He turned and began walking away.
                  "Do not walk away from me, Aksel!" I shouted, but he continued to walk and then he looked back at me and took to the air in flight. In a panic, I followed him.
                  The higher he flew, the higher I flew. The faster he flew, the faster I pushed through the clouds. I followed him until he realized I would not relent in my pursuit; then he landed in a meadow. He had his back to me when we landed, but I quickly seized upon him.
                  "I will ask you one more time, Aksel; one more time. Do you resent me ?"
                  He faced me and, for the first time in our sixty-one years together, he looked terrified of me. His eyes searched mine before answering in a whisper, "Yes. Yes, I do."
                  My hands reached up and secured his vest in my fisted palms. He remained fixed on my eyes and did