Sedna's drone landed with the mini-dome a few days later. She showed them all the pictures and plans. With the help of Frogo and Sedna, Newt unpacked it and spread it out on the sand on the area they had staked out for it. Following the setup instructions, they secured the dome to the ground at the tie-down points provided. Then they set up the inflator pump and connected it to a sun bottle power source they had brought from the tube farm. While the pump was running they shoveled sand against the bottom edges of the dome to keep the air from escaping. 

When the dome was inflated enough that they could go inside, they shoveled more sand around the bottom edges there to improve the seal. They kept the pump running until it had pumped in enough outside air to bring the inside up to about twice the outside air pressure. Then they set the pump to automatically maintain that pressure in case there was any leakage. Whenever one of them went in or out through the entrance closure, there was enough leakage to make the pump come on for a little while. So they knew the automatic pump was working.

The next day they got the water hooked up. They filled a little pond tank, and hooked the sun bottle power to an evaporator. When that had run for a while they got it regulated so the water vapor pressure would increase until it was about twice the carbon dioxide pressure. And the vapor was salt-free. 

Then they began planting. With Mister Green's guidance they got a nice selection of primitive plants growing and beginning to emit oxygen into the air. There was a bit of nitrogen in the thin air of Mars, and Mister Green said there was more underground. He made sure they had some plants that knew how to use it.  They also imported enough organic nitrogen from the tube farm to get things started.

After several good days of work done, they had parked their drones inside the little dome as usual and went to dinner in the farm tube. There were about fifty people living in the farm tube now. Many of them were prospectors like Frogo. Well, not like Frogo. No one was like Frogo except Frogo. And he was proud of the fact. But they were prospectors just the same, all with there own drones parked wherever they thought they might want to stake a claim.

A number of others were dedicated farmers, intent on perfecting the farm's balance in the Mars tube environment. Most of the rest called themselves geographers or geologists. Marsgrapher and marsologist hadn't caught on. These people used their drones to study the surface of Mars close up, and like Frogo often bringing physical samples back to the tube, so they could handle and study them directly, without the drone interface.

One of the unofficial functions of the common dining area was to give everyone a chance to catch up on each other's activities. So it was that Frogo commented to Sedna on her new appearance.

"Hi Sedna. I like your new outfit. Your drone avatar doesn't do it justice."

"Thanks, Frogo. I've been making adjustments. Haven't bothered to update the avatar yet."

Frogo studied her appearance a little more frankly. "What sort of adjustments? Isn't it just some new clothes you picked up on Earth?"

"Newt knows. While I was there I visited my mom and she gave me some tips on how to acclimate myself to Mars."

"Acclimate? In what way?"

"Well, you know that my mom's a shaman shifter, right?"

"Well, yeah, your mother, your brother, all those people at the Sea Shell. I guess everyone knows about that."

"While I was with her she showed me how to do a Mars shift in the Q. So I've been practicing. I shift my extra muscle mass to body fat."

Newt noticed that Sedna was blushing rather prettily with this admission. He couldn't help smiling at her.

"You mean you speed up the atrophy that happens to all of us living in Mars gravity, losing the muscle we don't need here?" He seemed to be ignoring the centrifuge time that everyone but him used to forestall the atrophy.

Sedna jumped on that. "Right. So I don't have to use the centrifuge anymore."

"Don't you worry about having to reacclimate to Earth when you go back?"

"My body naturally shifts back to Earth normal every night, when I'm in bed and not being affected by the gravity difference much. So I reacclimate every day."

 Frogo seemed to do a double take. "Wait. You mean..."

"That my Earth body won't really atrophy at all? Yup."

Frogo's mouth gradually spread into a wide grin. 

Newt grinned too, and said, "Once it becomes routine and she doesn't have to think about it much anymore, she's going to teach me how."

"And then I'll make a Mars dream, so everyone can learn how if they want to."

So that's how it went. Once the muscle dream was trained in so her body knew what to do when she got up in the morning, she taught it the bird lung dream. It was definitely a different way of breathing. 

But it worked just fine. She quickly found that, once her air sacs were full, she didn't need to inhale at all for a while. Just slowly exhale as her body used the oxygen, letting out the stale air. Then taking another breath to refill the sacs when they were empty.

When she had that trained in she was ready to do the hair. She reached into the Q to find the Spanish Moss dream that Dema had shown her, and taught her own natural hair how to do that shift.

She practiced this one while she was doing her daily farm choirs. The farm environment was perfect. In the warm moist air her new hair was a glorious green. Newt approved once he got used to it. 

She said to him, "It's actually a very nice feeling. Makes me feel more than ever like I'm one with the plants when I'm in here. I had thought that I'd need to braid my hair into tubes to guide the oxygen into my lung sacs. Turns out the fresh oxygen is happy to guide itself into my lungs when I want it to."

"Another example of how the dream really does guide the reality," said Newt.

Meanwhile their mini-dome was doing fine. Mister Green's selection of a starter crop was working miracles of its own, preparing the soil for some more ambitious planting, and releasing plenty of oxygen into the air. 

Sedna couldn't wait to be there in her new body.