In winter the town all but ceases to be.

a lot of the people pack up their worldly possesions and head south to try their luck in the four cities, few of them ever return. Some take this as a sign that things are better in the cities, that life is not so hard. Most people simply assume that they died there, if they even made it at all.

The houses of those who have left sort of vanish in the months to come, dismantled in the night to provide fuel for the fires that keep the remaining townspeople from freezing.

At first the hunters come back with food, enough for the reduced population, but as the cold gets more intense and the screaming storms set in for weeks at a time the hunters bring back less, if they even come back at all. People start dissapearing, taken in the night to be cooked on the fires that keep the townspeople from freezing.

Then there are no more empty houses, no more hunters, just a few buildings far away from eachother, shuddering in the screaming storms, barely keeping the hungry wind away from the fires that keep the townspeople from freezing, from the vanishing dead who will have no grave.

In the spring the doors will open again. New people will come from the woods to build a town where there is water and laughter and company.

But in winter the town all but ceases to be.