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MacKenzie doesn't make a habit of going through the random doors all that often. She had dragged Will to Disneyland, true, but usually she's content to go back and forth from work to home and occasionally through the rabbit hole to the hotel where she and Will can escape for a little while. MacKenzie loves it. The hotel means there's a place where they can be well and truly alone and now that there's phones, it's not much different - they still can't get proper internet or cell signals and the phones here only serve to make it easier to find one another if they go out on their own.

It is, in a word, ideal. The perfect little hideaway.

Still, MacKenzie is curious about the doors even if she hardly ever goes through and when she finds one that's, honest to god, a gorgeous slalom course with fresh powder and all the Olympic-level gear she could ever want, she has to go in. MacKenzie has always loved to ski and it's not really something she can do with Will on account of his bad knee so she spends hours running the course, hitting the gates on every pass. There's people down there timing her and she slowly figures out this is an actual Olympics practice course and she's apparently entered. This would be strange except it feels perfectly natural, as if she's been training for this for ages. Huh. MacKenzie is sure she's never seen stranger but she's seen enough strange that she's willing to go with it.

She loads herself up in Team USA gear (including a particularly ridiculous sweater) and pushes her goggles back on her head, heading back through the door to the Nexus to find Will and drag him back here. If she's going to win an Olympic medal, she's going to have Will here to watch it. He's not the only athlete around here.

There's snow melting beneath her ski boots and into the fine carpet of the hotel corridor and beyond the door she can hear bells as spectators cheer on and she's one step in and one step out.

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Olaf has been in that door. He'd wandered in by mistake and suddenly all his knowledge of surfing had transmuted into something else, like the universe had plucked it out of his mind and turned it into a basic (well, expert, really) knowledge of snowboarding. It'd been one hell of a mindfuck, but they do screen for drugs, so he hasn't been back since.

"How's the snow-surf?" he asks, grinning at the woman who's half in, half out.

"Snow-surf? You mean snowboarding?" MacKenzie asks, trying to figure out what he's after. She's never even stood up on a snowboard, much less used it to go down a mountain.

"I'm a skiier. Apparently I'm an alpine skiier and damned good at slalom."

Olaf doesn't mind the chill so much here, when at home he'd be out of Ty's freezer before you could say 'Olaf, why are you such a shitty oracle'. Here, it's almost like he's used to it. "Snowboarding indeed," he agrees, looking her over. "And have you always been so good at slalom?"

"Not at Olympic levels," MacKenzie admits. "It's like I stepped through this door and there's a part of me that just woke up and told me that I'm an internationally ranked skiier. I didn't question it. Was it the same for you?"

Olaf taps the side of his head, like he's been filtering in all his knowledge there for a while. "Everything you need to know to compete for a medal in snowboarding suddenly became part of my awareness. Also, a frightening awareness that you have to be sober and clean to win one of those things. I quickly dropped out," Olaf says with a pleased smile.

"Really? Afraid of the performance enhancing drugs?" MacKenzie asks, laughing lightly. That hadn't been a concern for her but she can't help but think it could have been for Will if he were competing.

"I don't use them, myself, but my fiance does. He is not out here doing this as a result."

"Afraid of the fact I can't smoke pot," Olaf says, wrinkling his nose and thinking of how he'd give up all the medals in the world, even though some part of his mind wars with him on that. "So what does your fiance do, then? Is he an athlete here, too?"

"Oh, no, just pot himself. He used to play baseball, long ago, and it's still fucking him over. He's just here to support me," MacKenzie says, laughing.

"Though you might have a customer in him."

"I do occasionally deal in the sale of specialized drugs," Olaf admits, after checking that there isn't anyone around who might arrest him for admitting such a thing. "Is he willing to pay market price?" Or potentially slightly above market price? Service fees are important, after all.

"Oh, absolutely. I'm sure you could get him to buy plenty. Or me, really, communal money at this point."

MacKenzie giggles softly. "I never thought I'd be negotiating a drug deal on the side of a mountain."

Olaf tugs on his ear, scratching behind the wool cap thoughtfully. "I've had weirder places, though that might have been because I 'shrooming at the time and don't clearly remember the events, because I sincerely doubt a koala in sunglasses actually sold me anything."

MacKenzie giggles a little more. "A koala with sunglasses? I thought koalas were Australia?" MacKenzie is actually halfway decent at picking out the various iterations of Commonwealth accents, being the possessor of one herself. It's a strange and little-used talent.

"They are, but stuffed versions of them in your cousin's home are a universal thing," Olaf guarantees with an easy grin. "I gave him sunglasses. Ingrid suggested I ought to name him, but naming things doesn't really come naturally to me. The best I could come up with was just 'Koala'."

"I'm shit at naming things too," MacKenzie agrees. "My teddy bear as a child was just named Bear. Seriously, just Bear. I could have at least called him Teddy but I digress."

She pitches her voice low again. "Can I meet you back in the hotel to buy...you know?"

Olaf hasn't been able to secure much business in the hotel, mainly because he's not entirely sure how police procedures work in a strange hotel in the middle of nowhere. So it's a good deal that he's managed to find someone to buy, seeing as customs coming back and forth has been fairly incredible. "You can find me anywhere," he says, in a state of relaxed bliss. "And I am always open for business."

"Excellent. This is the best news I've had all day," she says, beaming at him. It will be a nice surprise for Will, anyway.

"Will is kind of a big deal back home. Getting something here would mean it stays out of the papers."

Olaf likes to think that drugs are the best part of any day, but he doubts that other people would feel the same way. "I am the picture of discretion," he swears, squinting when he tries to think about whether it would get in the papers. "Wait, there's no papers in this place, right?"

"Not so far as I know and believe me, I would know. I'm a television news producer," MacKenzie explains. "And this place is a dearth of media, gossip or regular. I get to completely shut off when I come here."

Olaf gives her a bemused look as he looks around the mountains and the general air of feisty accomplishment that surrounds them. "I can't imagine wandering into a place where you're expected to win medals can be good for your blood pressure," he points out. "I take it you mean back at the hotel that it's calm for you?"

"Yes," MacKenzie says, suddenly a little awkward. "Not...here, no, this place is a little stressful. But back at the hotel? Oh. Completely pressure free. It's wonderful, isn't it? Not having anyone expecting something of you every waking moment?"

"I live my whole life pressure free," Olaf says brightly, gesturing to himself in the sort of way that says he's proud to brag about this. "Seriously, you should try it. No matter where you go, you don't give a damn about what you do or what people think. It's liberating."

"I think I would lose my mind inside of a day if I didn't have some structure and pressure." MacKenzie frowns a little, trying to figure him out.

"So what is it that you do all day when you're not skiing or snowboarding or lazing about the hotel? What did you do in New Zealand?"

Olaf thinks about that for a second, wondering if he's missing some wonderful answer about what he does do. The thing is, he really doesn't do much, does he? "Drink," he replies, shrugging. "Surf. Mostly eat and live in a supreme state of relaxation."

"I would go mad but I have to respect it," MacKenzie says, awed that someone could be that laid back and relaxed about anything. She certainly isn't.

"I suppose there's some merit to that, not stressing yourself over this thing or that."

Olaf gives a brilliantly pleased smile. "I've lived the way I've lived and it's how I'm as old as I am without barely a line for it," he says, though the whole reincarnated Baldr part helps with the wrinkles. "Try it for a week," he challenges. "Might surprise you."

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