Locals describe Tilos as a star that preferred the sea over the sky. It’s an apt description for this small island between Nisyros and Halki. It boasts seven kastra or fortifications and a pretty landscape Tilos also has many small churches and each hosts a panigyri in observance of its saint’s feast day. Ayios Pandeleimonas, the island’s patron-saint, is celebrated with a three-day communal feast from July 25 to July 27, with the celebration’s most important events on July 26, the eve of the religious feast. The panigyri takes place at the stone-built monastery with the pebble-laid floors, old wall paintings, and tall trees that sits at the end of the island’s only paved road. The monastery clings to a rocky crag overlooking the endless blue of the sea like a lonesome guard at the edge of nowhere. The locale boasts some unusual inhabitants: peacocks, hens, cats, and birds—all tame. Even when the monastery isn’t celebrating a feast day, guests are welcomed with the offering of a simple meal from the kitchen: tomato salad flavored with capers, an omelet, potatoes. But the panigyri is a colorful event that attracts pilgrims from throughout the Dodecanese. Decades ago, young girls dressed in the white embroidered local costume and move into the monastery nine days before the feast to help with the cleaning and preparations. Often they could be heard singing songs to the saint, asking for him to grant them joy, as they embroidered their dowry. On July 28, the day after the feast of Ayios Pandeleimon, the “cup dance” is held in the main square of the island capital, Megalo Horio. In the shadow of the medieval castle built by the knights, dancers perform this local folk dance in which the person leading the line holds a cup with money in his free hand. To take the lead, the next dancer must first put money in the cup, which he then holds as he moves to the front f the line. On August 14, eve of the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin, everyone converges on Mikro Horio, a settlement abandoned decades ago and now in ruins. The settlement is abandoned by day but comes to life during the panigyri of the all-white Theotokissa (as well as at night when a bar set in an old building opens for business). The Apodosis of the Theotokos on August 23, nine days after the feast of the Dormition, is another prominent celebration. Megalo Horio observes the feast with a three-day panigyri at Panayia Kamariani while at Livadi the feast centers on the Panayia Politissa. The feast of the Timia Zoni is observed at Mikro Horio on August 31, complete with the customary reenactment of the Loupies or Lazarus: a young boy stands under tree branches while the rest of the boys circle him singing the song of Lazarus.