One Word Writing Prompt: Winter

Every winter, as the air freezes and the snow falls, the animals retreat to the forest. There are no raccoons digging through garbage cans. No foxes mince through the park at twilight. Not even the songbirds come out in the morning to sing. Some of the animals bury themselves underground for all the winter months. Others just keep themselves warm by living in the close embrace of the trees, protected from wind and ice by the ancient, thick foliage. The city streets, open and barren, don only the footprints of the city folk as they trudge through rain and sleet, their coats tugged up to their ears. Even the ghosts hibernate for the winter.

At the first sign of frost, the ghosts fall back from their various haunts to the bury themselves underground. They don't join the bears and the skunks in their dens or the groundhogs in their holes. The ghosts nestle down in their tombs instead, to sleep the winter away with their bodies. Some fly out to sea on the west wind to join their bones in the salty depths. But most of them find their final resting places in the cemeteries and graveyards at the edges of the city. They whisper their farewells to friends and foes before slipping beneath the dirt or the marble or the stone that protects their remains. 

All except Sarah. 

She hovers at the graveyard gates, peering in at the sleepy spirits as they find their own graves and settle down for a wintry nap. This is her first winter as a ghost, and she isn't sure what to do. She died in a fire in the spring; there was nothing left of her to bury. Her bones were ground to dust when someone bulldozed the ashes of her house to build a new house for a new family. There is no grave, no marker, no memorial. Her family left after the fire, and she didn't follow them. Her past life has completely disappeared, unremembered, so she wanders aimlessly as a ghost, not even bothering to haunt or spook or chill. Her ghostly instinct tells her to hibernate, to seek the shelter that she knew in life before the storms come, but there is nowhere for her to go. 

She looks through the gates and wonders, What happens to a ghost in winter? She's about to find out.