We had done it hundreds of times at this point. Every time we met up for our "Green Day", as we liked to call it, the five of us stood in a shape that looked vaguely like a pentagram in the middle of the room. We weren't Satanists or anything, but since the whole act was against everything our Christian education had taught us, it added to the fun of the occasion.

Then we said a prayer to Her Highness.

"Praise be to Her Highness,

Goddess of good feelings and high spirits,

With every passing day

You lift us all up a little more."

"Her Highness" wasn't real, of course. She was a figment of our collective imagination, created to add to the escapism element of Green Day. I had chronic back pain, and somehow after a decade of visits to the doctor, mystery injections, and spending enough money to buy a new car, this was still the one thing that brought me relief, if only for a while.

My friend Janice, across the pentagram from me as always, bore no physical pain, but one look into her eyes told you there was something going on beneath the surface. Even when she otherwise seemed happy, that strange darkness was always there. Only on Green Day did her worries truly seem to disappear. It was like flicking a switch; all of a sudden she became the life and soul of the group. To her, the prayer to Her Highness was just as important as it was for me.

Her Highness represented life and laughter; a way to ignore all of our true problems. After praying to Her and carrying out Her work, we could become different people, isolated from the things that plagued us in everyday life.

So you can imagine our surprise when, this time, she actually appeared.

As we uttered the final words of our prayer, etched into our brains at this point, a loud hum filled the air. At the same time, a bright light appeared in the middle of the pentagram, in the shape of a vaguely human-looking figure. Upon finishing "a little more", the figure took a more definite form. We watched in awe, trying to take in what we were seeing.

She was, without a doubt, the most bizarre creature I had ever seen. She appeared to be a plant, and yet had human appendages, bearing five-fingered arms and flat feet that looked like long, thin leaves with serrated edges. Her face was made of leaves too, that knotted and twisted to form a nose and mouth. Droplets of moisture above the nose made the shape of eyes.

But her physical appearance was nothing compared to her smell, the smell that I had known since the age of 18. The smell I had grown to love. The smell that meant relief from pain. And it had never been so powerful! I wanted to get closer to her, to wrap myself up in that smell and keep it with me forever.

"Greetings! It is I, the Highlady," she said in a trill voice. "It must have taken you a lot of effort to summon me here. A pentagram is an unusual shape, but I'm here now, so it worked."

We were all still staring, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend what we were seeing. I wasn't sure what to say, other than ask a question that I already knew the answer to.

"Your... Highness?" I asked.

"Oh, is that what you call me? That's adorable!" she exclaimed, genuinely excited. "I like it. Maybe I'll use that name from now on. Highlady seems rather antiquated.

"But I must say, there is something about your group that I truly love. Every time you prayed, I saw you. I saw you truly enjoying yourselves, excited to partake in my sacred ritual. Having fun, looking forward to being able to escape all that which troubles you in this world.

"Some people think I'm a goddess of the state of being high, but in some ways I'm much more general than that. I am a goddess of enjoyment. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people enjoy themselves. And today, I come to help you in achieving that goal. That sense of being utterly relaxed, happy to be with your friends, feeling like nothing can get you down. So, without further ado... enjoy!"

And with her final words, all the life seemed to leave the goddess. The plant-human body fell forwards, as though it had had a heart attack.

"What the - what happened to her?" I cried, still not sure what was going on. Had we already started smoking? Was this some strange hallucination? No - this was way too detailed to not be real.

Janice, ever the one to think before acting, knelt down to check the body. She touched it gently, almost afraid to make contact. Of course, moments ago it had been home to a goddess, so it made sense. That darkness, that fear and worry that disappeared during the prayer, had returned to her eyes.

And it vanished just as quickly.

"Don't worry!" she said, uncharacteristically brightly. "She helped us alright - look!"

She held up her hand, revealing a dried bud.

Her Highness hadn't died. She had delivered us the weight of an entire body in weed. Enough to raise our spirits further than they had ever gone before, to lift us to new heights.

That day, we carried out Her work, and went higher than we had ever gone before.